Regina among top three cities for work in Canada

Canada, 2nd April: According to the findings by the Conference Board of Canada’s help-wanted index, Regina has emerged as one of the top three top cities for work in Canada.

Released on 26th March, 2010, the latest help-wanted index named the Queen City as third-highest ranked city on the Conference Board of Canada.

The index is based on number of new and unduplicated jobs submitted online across 79 job-posting sites of Canada during the month. 

The index is based on the number of new online job advertisements and went high to reach 4.4 percentage points after an enigmatic fall in the month of January. Although, the gain in the index percentage is just marginal since the decline in January, nonetheless, increase in the index is the sixth increase in the span of seven months, the report stated. 

Among the gains reported in different provinces of Canada, Saskatchewan emerged at the top. Of the five provinces reported to be gaining in the help-wanted index, Saskatchewan registered an increase of 23.5 points. 

Apart from Saskatchewan, almost all Western provinces of Canada registered small but significant gains with Quebec rising by 9.6 points and Ontario going up by 4.7 points. Meanwhile, Labrador and Newfoundland (Atlantic Canada) has witnessed noticeable losses by 6.3 points, the report stated. 

The main reason behind tremendous job losses has been the global recession which led to a series of job losses in the last quarter of 2008 and continued throughout 2009. It was only in the last quarter of 2009 that a recovery was noticed in the employment scene when the Help-wanted Index reported a hike of 7.1 points in a short span of three months from October till December 2009. 

Regina had nearly one unemployed person per job posting making the city as having one of the tightest labor markets in Canada. Regina was third with 22 percent and Saskatoon also performed well signifying a growth of 32 percent in the Help-wanted Index over the last six months. 

The report ushered a ray of optimism as the country expects the labor force survey by Statistics Canada to be released in a couple of weeks, said an economist with the Conference Board in Ottawa, Alan Arcand.