Local labour market `healthy and stable'

The local jobless rate nudged upward ever so slightly in April.

After sitting at 4.9 per cent for the first three months of 2024, the Brantford-Brant unemployment rate rose to five per cent in April, figures released by Statistics Canada on Friday say.

“The Brantford area labour market continues to be healthy and stable, and the status quo is a good position to be in,” Danette Dalton, executive director of the Workforce Planning Board of Grand Erie, said in a statement released Friday. “But alongside that story, there are other interesting trends that have become more noticeable.”

One of those trends relates to shifts in work type.

Dalton said there has been little change in total local employment in the last 12 months,.

However, the number of residents working full time has increased by about 3,300, while part-time work has fallen by an equivalent number.

“It's considered a positive barometer for the economy when full-time jobs increase,” Dalton said. “It points to employers doing well financially and having greater business confidence, and they show it by hiring or moving part-timers to full time.”

Most of the jobs – four out of every five - posted on the Grand Erie Jobs online job board in April were full-time positions. Moreover, almost 90 per cent were permanent positions, either full time or part time.

Dalton said there were more than 1,900 new postings last month. Combined with the postings carried over from March, the total of postings appearing in April was 3,500.

The number of employers posting jobs was up five per cent to 1,400.

Nationally, the unemployment rate remained at 6.1 per cent even though 90,000 jobs – far more than expected – were added to the Canadian economy. Ontario added 25,000 of those jobs but the provincial unemployment rate nudged up 0.1 percentage points to 6.8 per cent.

Regionally, only Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo saw its unemployment rate drop in April. Guelph had the lowest unemployment rate at 4.4 per cent followed by Brantford-Brant.

The planning board is one of 26 non-profit organizations in Ontario that play a leadership role in labour force planning. It is funded in part by the federal and provincial governments.