Posts Tagged ‘Labour Force Survey’
Rural and Urban Employment Impacted Differently by COVID-19
Across Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented job losses. Employment fell by 0.4% (-73,500) in April and remains 2.2% (–422,750) below the pre-pandemic employment level in February 2020. The loss and partial recovery in employment has followed different patterns based on where workers live. As of April 2021, large cities remain the furthest…Read More
Employment Recovery Lags for Low Earners
In August 2020, employment increased by another 246,000 jobs (+1.4%) to bring total employment in the month to nearly 97% of its February level. As noted by Statistics Canada’s data release, low-earning workers suffered larger initial job losses and are now facing a weaker recovery. Much of this is because low-earning workers are concentrated in…Read More
Key Measures of Economic Recovery: Employment and Hours Worked
In monitoring the economic recovery as pandemic restrictions lift, it is important to look at several labour market indicators. Average hours worked is one of those key indicators. Between February and April 2020, both employment and average hours worked fell by 15%. In June, the average hours worked rose by 7% (up 2 hours per…Read More
Impacts of COVID-19 on Women Working Part-Time
The COVID-19 shutdown has resulted in massive job losses, hitting some sectors worse than others and resulting in widespread upheaval. Women workers, however, have been affected to such an extent that some economists are calling this the first “she-cession.” Between February and May 2020, women bore 57% of employment losses, and experienced higher rates of…Read More
Job Loss Impacts of COVID-19 by Education, Gender and Age
Widespread job losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic have had an outsized impact on workers with lower levels of education. Since these workers tend to earn less on average, economists are concerned about rising inequality around the world. To see how Canadian workers are being affected, we examine the recent employment impacts by educational attainment,…Read More
COVID-19 Job Losses Concentrated Among the Lowest Earners
Employment fell by a further 1,993,800 (11%) in April, bringing total job losses to more than 3 million over the past two months. The official unemployment rate now stands at 13.0%, up from 7.8% in March. The job losses in March and April both far exceed the previous largest drop in employment recorded in the…Read More
Gender Implications of COVID-19 Unemployment
Between February and March 2020, the Canadian unemployment rate jumped from 5.6% to 7.8%. This was driven, in large part, by increases in temporary layoffs for occupations in sales and service, education, law, and social, community and government services. As non-essential businesses were forced to close, unemployment in these (and other) occupations grew substantially. This…Read More
A (Small) Glimmer of Hope in Today’s Job Report?
Today’s job report was pretty bleak. We had some early indications (e.g. the number of EI and CERB claims) of how deep the job losses would be and, unfortunately, we have some reason to believe that it will likely get worse before it gets better. But are there signs it will get better? Yes. There…Read More
Early Signs of the COVID-19 Impact on Canada’s Job Market
Employment fell by 1,010,700 in March in Canada – the largest drop on record –and the unemployment rate jumped to 7.8% from 5.6% in February. So say the first official statistics covering the onset of the COVID-19 crisis (see Figure 1), released today as part of the Labour Force Survey (LFS). Although these early indicators…Read More