Labour market improving on long road to recovery
Statcan jobs report adds race data for first time
Canada’s labour market likely continued its comeback last month, but gains are slowing on the long road to full recovery.
Statistics Canada is expected to report that 365,000 jobs were added in July, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. That would bring total jobs recovered to 1.6 million in the past three months, or just over 50 per cent of the 3 million lost in March and April.
While the employment gains will be welcome, economists have warned it could still take years before the labour market returns to pre- pandemic levels. Nor are labour outcomes evenly spread.
Women, low-income earners, youth and immigrants have been hit harder and will take even longer to recuperate.
On Friday, Statistics Canada will release jobs data by race for the first time that are expected to show minorities have been disproportionately hurt by the recession.
“We are going to see quite a lot of racial impact in who was hit hardest because low income often intersects with race and recent immigration status as well as gender and youth,” said Armine Yalnizyan, a research fellow at the Atkinson Foundation.
Separate polling is also showing a steady but gradual rebound. About 38 per cent of Canadians who either lost their job or were working reduced hours because of the pandemic were re-employed or working more, according to the latest survey by Nanos Research taken at the end of July for Bloomberg News.
That figure falls to 33 per cent for women who lost jobs or hours.
Job- listing data from Indeed Canada show total postings last week were down 26 per cent from a year ago, an improvement from a nearly 50 per cent gap three months ago.
For Friday’s jobs report, all 14 economists surveyed are predicting gains in July, as provinces continued their reopening plans. The labour force survey was taken between July 12 and July 18, just as Ontario was loosening another layer of restrictions on business and public gatherings.
But there’s a lot of uncertainty around the number, with the range of forecasts varying from 130,000 to 900,000. Economists see Canada’s jobless rate dropping to 11.2 per cent in July,
We are going to see quite a lot of racial
impact in who was hit
hardest.
from 12.3 per cent in June and 13.7 per cent in May, which was the highest on record going back to the Great Depression.
Unlike the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the U. S., Statistics Canada’s monthly labour force survey had never tracked employment conditions by visible minority status up until now. In the U. S., which has been collecting race data for years, White Americans have been showing a quicker pace of COVID-19 job recovery than Black Americans.