Unemployment rate lowest since December

For the fourth consecutive month, Montreal had a lower unemployment rate than Toronto in June.

The unemployment rate in the Montreal region dropped 0.4 percentage points from 6.2 per cent in May to 5.8 per cent in June, Statistics Canada said on Friday.

It is down 0.7 percentage points from 6.5 per cent in June of last year.

This is the lowest unemployment rate reported in the region since December, and it’s the fourth time in seven months that the city’s unemployment rate has been below six per cent.

Before December 2017, the unemployment rate in the region had never dipped below six per cent since comparable statistics started being recorded.

The decline in the unemployment rate was driven by an increase in employment; the region added slightly more than 10,000 jobs between May and June, according to the federal statistics agency.

The participation rate — the percentage of the working-age population employed or actively looking for work — stayed stable at 67.5 per cent.

Toronto saw its unemployment rate rise by 0.1 of a percentage point to 6.4 per cent, while Vancouver’s unemployment rate was 4.6 per cent during the month.

The provincial unemployment rate rose slightly from 5.3 per cent in May to 5.4 per cent in June, while the national unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points to six per cent.