As of September 7th, 2017 Ontario is leading Canada in job growth adding 31,100 jobs and our lowest unemployment rate of 5.7 in years! The bad news is all of the gains were in part time work, and there were 26,300 full-time jobs lost and youth lost employment. As Ontario continues to tinker with their Employment Standards and see a shift away from full-time work, Manitoba leads the country with 4.9% unemployment and BC close behind with 5.1%.
Canada continues to have a 5.3% unemployment rate compared to the US’s 4.4%, but Canada has a higher percentage of people working and looking for jobs. Canada has 3% more of the population who work and are looking for jobs than the US partly due to better maternity leave provisions that help women return to the workforce.
One small highlight in August was Alberta adding 7,600 full-time jobs despite having to continue to deal with low commodity prices. This week hopes of Calgary landing a huge Amazon office are generating some needed excitement in the city and would be a boost for the province.
Finally, as we see recovery efforts pick up in Houston Texas and Florida preparing for hurricanes, we hope that people stay safe and can return to work and their lives quickly.
I’ve seen dozens of Canadian Power Line Technicians we have place head south this week to help with storm restoration work to help Texas and Florida get electricity back on. The one thing we know about Americans is they rebound, rebuild and get back to work faster than anyone in the world and Canadians are happy to help.