Federal government working to remove outdated job posting from Canada Job Bank

OTTAWA – There are about 6,000 fewer jobs on the federal job bank this week than there were two weeks ago as government officials work to remove postings that languished on the site for months after jobs were filled.

An official at Employment Minister Jason Kenney’s department says the government has been working with its partners to ensure postings on the job bank are as current as possible.

The employment website Workopolis is among the partners that have attempted to fix a technical snafu that allowed thousands of outdated postings to linger on the site.

Kenney often cites the tens of thousands of positions posted on the job bank — as well as the seven million hits it receives monthly — as evidence of its success.

The job bank also plays a critical role in Canada’s besieged temporary foreign workers program. The rules require would-be employers to post ads seeking Canadian workers for four weeks before they apply to hire temporary foreign workers.

As well, the government uses the job bank to point employment insurance recipients to openings.

But until recently, the site showed a litany of job postings in dozens of communities across Canada that had long since been filled. They included ads for food servers, pipeline engineers, auto mechanics and retail sales clerks.

Follow Lee-Anne Goodman on Twitter at @leeanne25