Employment fell by more than one million in March (-1,011,000 or -5.3 per cent), according to data released Thursday by Statistics Canada.
The federal agency said the employment rate—or the proportion of people aged 15 and older who were employed—fell 3.3 percentage points to 58.5 per cent, the lowest rate since April 1997.
“Of those who were employed in March, the number who did not work any hours during the reference week (March 15 to 21) increased by 1.3 million, while the number who worked less than half of their usual hours increased by 800,000. These increases in absences from work can be attributed to COVID-19 and bring the total number of Canadians who were affected by either job loss or reduced hours to 3.1 million,” it said.
“The unemployment rate increased by 2.2 percentage points to 7.8 per cent, the largest one-month increase since comparable data became available in 1976. Unemployment increased by 413,000 (+36.4 per cent), largely due to temporary layoffs. In addition, the number of Canadians who had worked recently and wanted to work, but did not meet the official definition of unemployed, increased by 193,000.”
Provincially, employment fell in all provinces, with Ontario (-403,000 or -5.3 per cent), Quebec (-264,000 or -6.0 per cent), British Columbia (-132,000 or -5.2 per cent) and Alberta (-117,000 or -5.0 per cent) reporting the largest declines.
Among youth aged 15 to 24, employment decreased by 392,500 (-15.4 per cent) in March, the fastest rate of decline across the three main age groups. The decrease was almost entirely in part-time work, and brought the employment rate for youth to 49.1 per cent, the lowest on record using comparable data beginning in 1976, said StatsCan.
Unemployment for youth increased by 145,300 (+49.7 per cent) in March, bringing their unemployment rate up 6.5 percentage points to 16.8 per cent, the highest rate for this group since June 1997, it added.
Alberta’s unemployment rate jumped from 7.2 per cent to 8.7 per cent in March as the province also lost 118,400 jobs on a year-over-year basis.
“We knew it was coming, but it’s still shocking to see the initial effects of the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 on employment,” said ATB Financial’s Economics & Research Team in its daily economic update The Owl.
“There were 117,100 fewer jobs in Alberta in March than in February—a drop of 5.0 per cent. The next largest monthly drop over the 531 months of the current data series was 1.1 per cent in May 1982.
“The unemployment rate did not jump as much as you might think because many people who wanted a job were not looking for one due to business closures or containment efforts. (To be counted as “unemployed” you have to be actively looking for work.) Alberta’s labour force contracted by 86,900 people (3.5 per cent) in March. As with total employment, this drop is unprecedented over at least the last four decades. The next largest monthly decline in Alberta’s labour force was 1.0 per cent in October 1984.
“Not surprisingly, the largest job losses occurred in accommodation and food services (-27.9 per cent), information, culture and recreation (-25.8 per cent) and wholesale and retail trade (-8.1 per cent).”
In the Calgary census metropolitan area, the unemployment rate rose from 7.4 per cent to 8.6 per cent in March as employment fell by 17,100 month-over-month and by 23,500 year-over-year.
In the Edmonton census metropolitan area, the unemployment rate increased from 7.8 per cent to 7.9 per cent as employment dropped by 21,200 month-over-month and by 27,500 year-over-year.
“We know that the April employment reading is likely to be even worse, since shutdowns only really began in earnest around the middle of March, and some employers might have tried to hold on to some employees in the early weeks of the forced closures. But this survey was conducted a week later than the US non-farm payroll report, so it might have captured more of the sudden-stop in activity, and on a relative basis might mean there’s at least slightly less downside in the Canadian numbers left to show up than those south of the border. Either way, April’s jobs reports are likely to plumb new lows in both Canada and the US, and reveal more of the economic devastation from COVID-19,” said Royce Mendes, an economist with CIBC Economics.
“Gulp. We all knew it was going to be bad, but it is still hard to process the numbers we received today, particularly once definitional quirks that kept the unemployment rate from looking worse than it might have otherwise been are accounted for. Indeed, this single report wiped out 40 months of net employment gains, and the worst is yet to come. Reports that more than four million Canadians have already applied for various income support measures (EI and the Canada Emergency Response Benefit) remind us that as bad as the March data was, we’re not yet looking at the full COVID-19 impact,” said Brian DePratto, Senior Economist with TD Economics.
