{"id":38198,"date":"2026-05-09T06:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T06:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/38198\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T06:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T06:13:13","slug":"canadas-unemployment-rate-rises-to-six-month-high-as-full-time-jobs-drop-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/38198\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s unemployment rate rises to six-month high as full-time jobs drop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A welder on an assembly line in Ontario. The goods-producing sector, which is the most exposed to U.S. tariffs, saw employment drop by 26,800 jobs in April.Spencer Colby\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s economy took an unexpected hit on the job market in April, while unemployment also crept up, raising concerns about the strength of the economy ahead of the Bank of Canada\u2019s rate decision next month.<\/p>\n

Statistics Canada\u2019s labour force survey released on Friday said the economy shed 18,000 jobs in April, following an increase of 14,000 jobs<\/a> in March.<\/p>\n

The loss came as the unemployment rate rose to 6.9 per cent compared with 6.7 per cent in March, returning to where it was in October last year, largely because more people were looking for work.<\/p>\n

Economists had expected the economy to add jobs for the month and the unemployment rate to hold steady.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the drivers of that increase in the unemployment rate, in particular for April, it was not driven by permanent layoffs, so that\u2019s kind of the good news,\u201d RBC assistant chief economist Nathan Janzen said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat drove the unemployment rate higher, a lot of it was people quitting their current job to look for a new one.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Janzen said it isn\u2019t a good indication that people aren\u2019t immediately able to find a new job, it does signal confidence in the labour market that people are willing to quit their jobs in search for another.<\/p>\n

The Bank of Canada held its overnight lending rate at 2.25 per cent last month \u2013 its fourth consecutive hold after back-to-back quarter-point drops in September and October of last year.<\/p>\n

The central bank said it was closely monitoring the impact of the Middle East war and how the economy continues to respond to U.S. tariffs and trade policy uncertainty.<\/p>\n

In a note to clients Friday, Toronto-Dominion Bank senior economist Andrew Hencic said given the soft jobs report and the limited ability for companies to pass on inflation shock price increases to consumers, he expects the Bank of Canada to continue to hold this year, if the sharp rise in oil prices begins to reverse in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, the head of the International Energy Agency warned the global energy crisis from the war in Iran will hit Canadians soon.<\/p>\n

Fatih Birol said it\u2019s the worst energy crisis the world had ever seen. And while Canada has been somewhat insulated from the full effect of the price shocks so far, he warned that would soon change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Canada\u2019s future or current customers are economically weak, their ability and appetite to buy energy or other things will be weaker,\u201d Birol said in Ottawa on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Canada should accelerate new energy infrastructure as markets shift, IEA chief says<\/a><\/p>\n

Adding to the concerns surrounding Canada\u2019s economy is the uncertainty around the trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico that is up for a mandatory review this year.<\/p>\n

While Canada added 67,000 more jobs on a year-over-year basis, the country has lost 112,000 jobs since January, mostly in the manufacturing and wholesale sectors.<\/p>\n

The last time Canada lost so many jobs in a four-month window was from October, 2020, to January, 2021 \u2013 during the pandemic. In non-pandemic times, you\u2019d have to go back to 2009, when Canada lost 241,000 jobs in a four-month span.<\/p>\n

Bank of Montreal chief economist Doug Porter said there\u2019s no debate that the first couple months of the year have been challenging.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe the best way to look at this is, what\u2019s happened over the last 12 months and what we\u2019ve seen is very little job growth,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall employment is up 0.3 per cent. That\u2019s next to no job growth whatsoever, when you think about the fact that there\u2019s over 20 million people employed in the country.\u201d <\/p>\n

Janzen also pointed to the \u201cunprecedented\u201d slowdown in Canada\u2019s population growth as a factor in the soft employment growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that kind of a backdrop, you would expect to see less employment growth,\u201d Janzen said.<\/p>\n

Ontario added 42,000 jobs in April, largely in health care and social assistance, but that was offset by a loss of 43,000 jobs in Quebec in the wholesale and retail trade sectors.<\/p>\n

Statscan also said on Friday that average hourly wages were up 4.5 per cent from a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A welder on an assembly line in Ontario. The goods-producing sector, which is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-38198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-pei","42":"tag-photos","43":"tag-political-news","44":"tag-political-opinion","45":"tag-politics","46":"tag-politics-news","47":"tag-quebec","48":"tag-sports-news","49":"tag-technology","50":"tag-travel","51":"tag-trudeau","52":"tag-us-news","53":"tag-world-news","54":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}