(Ottawa) The Canadian economy created tens of thousands of jobs last month, which helped reduce the national unemployment rate to its lowest level since the start of the pandemic, even as economists warn that the next gains could become more and more difficult to achieve.
The addition of 31,000 jobs allowed the unemployment rate to settle at 6.7%, down from 6.9% in September, registering its fifth consecutive monthly decline, Statistics said Friday. Canada.
According to the federal agency, the unemployment rate would have been 8.7% in October, against 8.9% in September, if it had not excluded from its calculations Canadians who wanted to work, but were not at looking for a job.
Royal Bank economists Nathan Janzen and Claire Fan pointed out in an analysis that the unemployment rate remains above the long-term rate of around 6.0%, suggesting fewer than 200,000 workers are available.
This will make it difficult to fill the approximately 900,000 current vacancies, said Leah Nord, senior director of workforce strategies for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. This task will be more difficult than recovering the 3 million jobs lost at the start of the pandemic, which the country finished doing in September, she said.
“We just want to end this, but it won’t happen,” she said. “It won’t happen for a long time. ”
Gains have been seen in a number of industries, including the retail sector, which has been hit hard by the pandemic. It created 72,000 jobs in October, which, according to Statistics Canada, brought the industry back to pre-pandemic levels for the first time since March.
Some of these gains, however, were offset by declines elsewhere, such as accommodation and food services, where it was the second consecutive monthly decline. TD Bank economist Sri Thanabalasingam suggested this was in part related to the reinstatement of health restrictions in Alberta.
For his part, Bank of Montreal chief economist Douglas Porter said the drop could also signal new headwinds on hiring for bars and restaurants.
Statistics Canada reported that half of the workers who lost their jobs in this industry between August and October returned to the sector, with the rest having migrated to other sectors, roughly in line with pre-pandemic trends. .
No “big resignation” in Canada
Across the labor market as a whole, nearly 7 in 10 unemployed people who returned to work in 12 months or less remained in the same industry, which again was in line with pre-pandemic trends.
The data suggests no signs of a “big resignation” in Canada, noted Behnoush Amery, senior economist at the Labor Market Information Council, but rather problems more specific to some, especially in industries of closer physical contact services, such as accommodation and food services.
It seems that there is a lot of turnover and adjustments in this sector, for which we do not yet have a complete picture.
Behnoush Amery, Senior Economist at the Labor Market Information Council
Average wages in the industry have been mostly stable, perhaps because employers were monitoring what happened to federal aid programs, said Brendon Bernard, senior economist at Indeed.
Federal government assistance programs expired at the end of October, and business assistance is now limited to the hardest hit businesses.
The jobs report also noted a decline in self-employment, but suggests that some of those jobs have migrated to more permanent and in-demand positions, such as in professional, scientific and technical services.
In addition, the number of long-term unemployed in Canada – those who have been unemployed for at least six months – changed little in October, remaining at nearly 380,000, Statistics Canada said.
In Quebec, the number of jobs remained essentially stable, declining by only 300, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.6%, from 5.7% in September.
Elsewhere in the country, employment increased in Ontario and New Brunswick, while it declined in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Some 37,000 jobs were created in Ontario, where the unemployment rate fell 0.3 percentage points to 7.0%.
In the Maritimes, the unemployment rate fell from 9.3% to 9.1% in New Brunswick and from 11.3% to 9.1% in Prince Edward Island. It increased 0.3 points in Nova Scotia to 8.3%.