Windsor’s jobless rate dropped by four percentage points in April to a seasonally adjusted three-month moving average of 8.1 per cent, according to new data from Statistics Canada.
After posting the highest jobless rates in the country several times in 2024 and 2025, Windsor now seventh behind London, Barrie, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Nanaimo, Oshawa and Toronto.
But the CEO of Workforce WindsorEssex says there’s not a lot to celebrate in the latest data.
“I think the real story here is that there’s thousands of people — in this case, 3,700 — who are leaving the labour market from last month,” Justin Falconer said.
“It seemed like in October, November, December, January, there [was] a real expansion in the total size of the labour force … But it seems to be decreasing, and it’s near where it was a year ago in terms of total size. So perhaps last fall, end of the year, there was just an elevated high number of labour force participants in the mix.”
The labour force includes people who are both working and looking for work, Falconer said.
People could be leaving the labour force for a number of reasons, he said, including retirement, caregiving obligations, temporary layoffs and permanent layoffs that have not yet resulted in former employees starting to look for new jobs.
Nationwide, the unemployment rate rose to 6.9 per cent in April, as Canada shed around 18,000 jobs, according to the Statistics Canada data.
Unemployment down in Ontario
Hardest hit were youth aged 15 to 24, whose unemployment rate rose 0.5 percentage points to 14.3 per cent, and men aged 25 to 54, whose unemployment rate rose 0.3 percentage points to 6.1 per cent.
In Ontario, unemployment dropped slightly to 7.5 per cent from 7.6 per cent in March, according to Statistics Canada.
Workforce WindsorEssex data shows that overall employment in the region fell in April by 2,400 people.
The number of people not participating in the labour force grew by a total of 4,100.
Justin Falconer is the CEO of Workforce WindsorEssex. (Tahmina Aziz/CBC)
One bright spot for Windsor-Essex was the addition of 2,600 manufacturing jobs, Falconer said, something that might come as a surprise in light of the uncertainty caused by U.S. tariffs.
He attributed that growth in part to the addition of the third shift at the Stellantis Windsor Assembly Plant in February, which is now fully represented in the three-month moving average.
Windsor’s population continues to grow, according to the data, and Falconer said he believes people are still moving to the city for work.
People who have been unemployed for long periods of time are often those who would benefit from acquiring new skills, he added.
“For employers to find new talent now … they’re not going to be international students in the same way that it was a year ago,” he said.
“It’s not going to be immigration in the same way that it was a year ago. We’re going to have to really work on upskilling our domestic population to meet employer needs in our community.
High schools and post-secondary institutions are doing a good job of giving people the technical skills they need for the workplace, he said.
What employers are really looking for is soft skills.
“I think if you were to talk to employers, they would, you know, often say, ‘I need someone who’s reliable, dependable, who’s ready to show up on the job … and just really have that appetite to learn and to grow,” he said.