Ford government stumbles into a health care staffing crisis as job vacancies top 42,000

Job vacancies across the Ontario economy have sky-rocketed over the last two years, with a ten percent increase in 2020 and a 66% increase in 2021. Compounded that represents an 82% increase in two years. Correspondingly, the average offered hourly wage for all occupations went up 4.6% in Ontario (to $23.70) from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021. The increase in job vacancies is particularly marked in health care industries. In hospitals, there has been a continuous increase in the number of job vacancies and in the job vacancy rate since 2015, with a sharp spike in the last two years. Job vacancies went from 3,635 at the end of 2015 to 8,855 at the end of 2019 (just before COVID), and then onto 16,685 by the end of 2021. That is a 359% increase since the end of 2015 and a 88% increase since the end of 2019. The hospital job vacancy rate has increased from 1.6% at the end of 2015 to 6.3% at the end of 2021. In nursing and residential care facilities the pattern has been broadly