'There remains a long road ahead to regain the roughly three million jobs lost as a result of the pandemic, but the pace so far has defied expectations'
Employment rose by nearly one million (953,000) in June following a 290,000 gain in May as economies continue to re-open amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Statistics Canada (StatCan). These came on the heels of losses of more than one million in March and nearly two million in April.
With the two consecutive increases, employment in June was 1.8 million (-9.2 per cent) lower than in February.
The job numbers are another step in the right direction, says Brian DePratto, senior economist at TD Economics.
“There remains a long road ahead to regain the roughly three million jobs lost as a result of the pandemic, but the pace so far has defied expectations.”
Overall, the Canadian labour force went up to 19,880,000, an improvement of 786,300 or 4.1 per cent.
The number of jobseekers also went up (180,000 or 12.6 per cent) while there was a drop in those who wanted a job but did not look for one (448,000 or 32.1 per cent).
“It was not just the employment gains that were encouraging, but also the strong rise in the labour force. This may be telling us that Canadians are becoming a bit more confident from a health perspective – recall that at the height of the pandemic, there was a massive increase in people who had stopped looking for work entirely,” says DePratto. “The generally improving new infection numbers provide hope that the labour market healing can continue.”
Variations by gender, age, location
In June, employment rose slightly faster among women (up 6.1 per cent or 467,000) than men (up 5.5 per cent or 487,000). However, employment among men had recovered to 92.3 per cent of its February level since May, compared with 89.2 per cent among women.
Among age groups, 25- to 54-year-olds gained the most (up 588,900 or 5.3 per cent) from May to June, followed by 15- to 24-year-olds (up 262,900 or 15.4 per cent) and those aged 55 and older (up 101,200 or 2.7 per cent).
Despite the gains in youth employment in June, the numbers are still down 580,000 (22.7 per cent) compared with February, according to StatCan. This is because employment decreased by 873,000 (or 34.2 percent) from February to April.
The deficit is also larger for young women (down 26.4 per cent) than for young men (down 19.1 per cent).
Among provinces, Ontario (up 377,900 or 5.9 per cent), Quebec (up 247,500 or 6.5 per cent) and British Columbia (up 125,500 or five per cent) had the biggest increases in employment numbers, followed by Alberta (up 91,600 or 4.6 per cent).
Saskatchewan (up 30,300 or six per cent), Nova Scotia (up 28,900 or 7.1 per cent), Manitoba (up 28,900 or 4.9 per cent) and New Brunswick (up 22,200 or 6.8 per cent) also had significant improvement in employment numbers while Newfoundland and Labrador (up 6,000 or 3.1 per cent) and Prince Edward Island (up 1,700 or 2.4 per cent) had the smallest gains.
Remote work
Among those who were employed and worked at least half of their usual hours working at locations other than home increased by two million in June, while the number of Canadians working from home fell by 400,000.
Temporary layoffs also fell to 2.5 million in June, a decrease of nearly 167,000 (6.4 per cent) from May, but still more than the 1.1 million in February level, says the government.
Overall, unemployment was at 12.3 per cent, down 1.4 per cent from May.
“Ultimately, while today's numbers are encouraging, there are almost 1.8 million lost jobs yet to be recovered. It is still a long way to the finish line,” says DePratto.
Recently, there was also an improvement in job postings, according to online job board Indeed Canada.
Employers’ net employment outlook for the third quarter stands at -10 per cent, a drop of 19 percentage points from the previous quarter and 21 percentage points from the third quarter of 2019, according to a survey by ManpowerGroup.
