Job Vacancies in the United States and Canada 1

Abstract

What is the relationship between U.S. and Canadian job vacancies? Job vacancies, which summarize the number of workers businesses want to hire, have not been compared because long term vacancy series do not exist for either country. This paper constructs analogous Canadian and U.S. job vacancy series from 1962 to 1990 that are syntheses of each country's direct and indirect vacancy data. These series show that while unemployment rates in the two countries follow similar patterns, vacancies are dramatically different.