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Since 2016, however, things have been looking up — for public sector workers, at least, although not for Ontario taxpayers. The current average growth of compensation is fully 4.4 per cent. The new Ontario government will want to pull back on that. One problem in doing so is that job vacancies in government have been rising, from a vacancy rate of 1.1 per cent in 2015 to 1.5 per cent in 2017. In the hospital sector in 2017 it was 2.8 per cent.

If jobs that aren’t being filled aren’t really necessary or even do harm, the best way to reduce the vacancy rate is to abolish the jobs. (Are we really sure, for instance, that diversity policies have a net positive effect on society?)

If the problem is that, with all the process, it takes too long to hire people into government or move them from one job to another within it, then the new government can trim red tape. That’s a quixotic quest but some short-run clearing out of the underbrush may be possible.

But if the jobs aren’t being filled because wages aren’t high enough to attract people either to the work or to Ontario itself, that’s a problem. How do you raise wages to fill growing vacancies without causing overall government compensation to accelerate back to pre-recession growth rates?

What’s crucial to know, and what the FAO commentary unfortunately doesn’t mention, is quit rates. How many people actually ever quit a government job? This is anecdotal but in my years in the “para-public” university sector in Quebec, almost no one did. When people did get a better offer elsewhere, the relevant chair or dean could do their best to try matching it. In an environment in which bright new PhDs were in high demand but older-vintage PhDs not so much, there was widespread wage compression: Young people’s salaries approached many older folks’ salaries.

Of course, we weren’t unionized, although merit increases were reviewed and could be appealed. If Ontario’s government could differentiate salaries in this way, paying more for the people it needs and not as much for those unlikely to quit, it could lower its job vacancy rate and still control total compensation.

But if it has to hike wages for 100 per cent of its employees so it can pay what’s needed to get the vacant three per cent of jobs filled, well… good luck, Ontario!