Canada’s economy added 157,000 new jobs last month, according to Statistics Canada—enough to put employment numbers back above where they were before the pandemic started.
The increase was more than twice as big as the 60,000 new jobs that economists were expecting.
It was also enough to push the jobless rate down two to 6.9 per cent, the lowest rate since the pandemic started.
Before the pandemic, Canada’s jobless rate was 5.6 per cent. It jumped up sharply in March, April and May of 2020, peaking at 13.7 per cent in May of last year, and has trended downward ever since.
Yet while there are now as many jobs as there were before the pandemic started, that doesn’t always mean people are working as much as they were before.
The number of people working less than half the hours they would normally do is still 218,000 people higher than in February 2020. And the total number of hours worked by all employees is still 1.5 per cent below the pre-pandemic level, Statistics Canada highlighted.
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