AUS
NZ
UK
CA
USA
FRA
GER
ESP
ITA
NLD
PRT
SWE
GRC
IND
POL
BRA
ZAF
RUS
CHN
UAE
After a streak of monthly gains, Canada’s job market witnessed a loss of 63,000, or 0.3 per cent month-over-month (MoM), in December last year, reported Statistics Canada. This latest drop in numbers is the first decline in the country’s employment since April, when the coronavirus pandemic first began disrupting jobs.
The second wave of the COVID-19 outbreak forced many provinces across Canada to bring back lockdown protocols, which led to the disruption of businesses and employment once again. As a result, about 1.1 million workers in Canada faced the brunt of either job loss or reduced working hours by the end of December last year. This number was comparatively lower than that of 5.5 million in April, as per the latest report by the national statistics agency.
The rise of public health measures saw total hours worked decrease for the first time since April 2020, down by 0.3 per cent MoM in December. At the same time, the number of Canadians working from home soared to 28.6 per cent.
©Kalkine Group 2020
Key Highlights of Canada’s Job Market Statistics in December
- Canada’s unemployment rate in December, at 8.6 per cent, remained essentially unchanged from that of 8.5 per cent from the month before.
- While part-time employment fell by 99,000, or nearly three per cent in December, self-employment saw a decline of 62,000.
- Services-producing sector lost jobs for the first time since April last year, down by 74,000, or 0.5 per cent.
- Provinces of Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island reported a monthly decline in employment.
- Employment among young Canadians, especially those between the ages of 15 and 24, fell farther from its pre-pandemic levels.
- While employment dropped by 8.8 per cent among young men, the number was down 12.1 per cent among young women as they continued to be the worst-hit demographic in Canada’s job market amid the pandemic.
- The unemployment rate for people of or over the age of 55 climbed 0.8 percentage points to 7.9 per cent in December.
- Employment among Indigenous people continued to slump in December, still dwindling 7.8 per cent below the pre-COVID levels from February 2020.
- The rate of unemployment among South Asian Canadians shrank for the second month in a row in December, down 1.8 percentage points to 8.7 per cent.
- For Southeast Asian and Latin American Canadians, unemployment soared by 3.9 percentage points to 12.6 per cent and 2.1 percentage points to 12 per cent, respectively.
