Statistics Canada says 1 million jobs sit empty nationwide
Nearly two and a half years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the staffing conundrum initially driven by high infection rates has evolved into an acute labour challenge.
Herb Emery, the Vaughan Chair in regional economics at the University of New Brunswick, said when it comes to staff shortages, the pandemic was “like the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“These emerging shortages have been present for decades,” Emery said. “So, no one should be surprised that we’re short on doctors that we’re short on nurses.”
In recent weeks hospitals across the country have taken drastic measures to cope with the staff shortages, including temporarily closing emergency departments.
The labour shortage is not unique to health care. Nationwide Statistics Canada says about one million jobs sit empty. But the shortages in health care are the most pronounced.
Statistics Canada said job vacancies in health during the first quarter of this year were nearly double what they were two years ago. Nurses and nurses aides were among the top ten occupations with the largest job vacancy increases over that period.
Emery says shortages in healthcare are a result of policies introduced in the 1980s and 1990s that were aimed at cutting healthcare costs. Doctors, who are paid with a fee-for-service compensation structure, were identified as a major driver of elevated costs for health care and policies were introduced to limit the supply of doctors, he said.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information said in a 2002 report that policies like reduced medical school enrolments and restrictions on international medical graduates contributed to a smaller inflow of new doctors.
