Canada shed three million jobs in the last two months due to the coronavirus lockdown, causing the unemployment rate to shoot up to 13 percent in April, the government reported Friday.
That rate more than doubled, following a relatively small increase the previous month when restrictions started to be put in place, its statistical agency said.
The new rate is second only to the 13.1 percent observed during a recession in 1982, but lower than analysts had forecast. Statistics Canada said the figure would have been much higher had it included a large number of people who wanted to work but could not job-hunt "presumably due to ongoing business closures and very limited opportunities to find new work." Many also worked fewer hours, the agency said.
All of this has led to 6.7 million Canadians applying for unemployment benefits or government aid, and just over one in five Canadian households reporting difficulties meeting financial obligations.
Although worst-case projections failed to materialize, "when you're rounding the number of jobs lost to the nearest million, there's nothing to cheer about," commented CIBC analyst Avery Shenfeld.
The employment declines over the past two months were observed in all provinces, but Quebec - which has recorded the highest number of COVID-19 infections and fatalities - led all of them with 821,000 jobs lost. Employment also dropped sharply in Canada's three largest cities - Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Youths aged 15-24, recent immigrants, low-wage workers and those with the least job security - temporary or non-unionized, for example - suffered the most job losses.
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