Some 3 million jobs were lost following a lockdown initiated in Canada in March to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
However, more people are now back at work.
The results of the August Labor Force Survey, released on Friday, showed that the recent relaxation of public health restrictions meant more employment for people in Canada in general and immigrants in particular.
In August, employment for Canadians increased by 1.4%, rising to within 5.7% of pre-COVID levels. Meanwhile, employment for migrants had increased by 1.6% recently, while employment for recent immigrants had risen by 2.2%, mainly due to a decrease in the population of recent migrants that increased during the epidemic. The newcomer arrived due to arrival.
Massive employment gains were in full-time positions.
Employment development was concentrated in the services sector (+ 1.5%) as opposed to the goods production sector.
The growth of the service sector was concentrated in educational services, housing and food services, and the \”other services\” industry that included hardened hair and beauty salons.
\”In the goods producing sector, gains in manufacturing were partially offset by declines in natural resources.\”
While these benefits are very good news for all Canadians, there exist some disparities in the employment picture.
The labor force participation rate for men is now within 0.2% of pre-covid levels, while for women it is 1.3% below pre-covid levels – a sign that many women seek non-employment related activities such as childcare.
The unemployment rate for visible minorities is higher than those who are not members of a visible minority group. The national unemployment rate is 11.1% (not seasonally adjusted) compared to 17.9% for Arabs, 17.6% for blacks, and 16.6% for the Southeast Asian population.
Low-paid workers and youth have a February level employment level of only 86.0%, while other workers have almost returned to pre-COVID levels (99.1% of February employment levels). This is entirely driven by the concentration of low-wage employment in industries producing hard-hit services.
As such, there remains much room for improvement. Canada still needs to recover 1.1 million jobs that have been lost since the onset of the epidemic.
However, this new report suggests that Canada\’s economic recovery is moving in the right direction. About 1.9 million jobs have been recovered in recent months. In addition to the 246,000 jobs created in August, another 419,000 were recovered in July, and 1.2 million were recovered in May and June.