By Vancouver Sun | Link to Article
Statistics Canada says British Columbia’s unemployment rate fell in March as the province added 18,000 more jobs, the largest employment growth since the autumn of 2012.
By Vancouver Sun | Link to Article
Statistics Canada says British Columbia’s unemployment rate fell in March as the province added 18,000 more jobs, the largest employment growth since the autumn of 2012.
The gains were split between full-time and part-time jobs and pushed B.C.’s unemployment rate down by 0.6 percentage points to 5.8 per cent, making it the fourth lowest in the country, after Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba.
Nationally, the economy churned out nearly 43,000 net new jobs last month, shaving the unemployment rate one tenth of a point to 6.9 per cent.
The employment increase, although mostly part-time, was the best in months and about double what economists had anticipated.
The other surprise in the Statistics Canada report was that the vast majority of the new jobs went to young Canadians, the 15-24 age group that has mostly been left behind during the recovery.
If there was a soft spot in the report, besides the preponderance of part-time work, it was that almost all the new jobs were in the public sector, while new private sector hiring was limited to 3,900.
Still, the March numbers will be seen as a positive to the economy, which had been having difficulty gathering momentum during the unusually cold winter.
Regionally, most of the new jobs went to Canada’s most populous provinces. Following B.C., Quebec added 15,100 and Ontario 13,400. There were minor job losses in Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island.
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