COVID’s impact on local jobs is revealed
Provincial report outlines toll, which hit youth and women harder
Peterborough saw the steepest decline in jobs of Ontario’s cities during the pandemic, mostly through the service sector, according to a new report released Thursday by the Financial Accountability Officer of Ontario.
The report looked at the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Ontario census metropolitan areas, including Peterborough, which saw an unemployment rate of about 13.5 per cent at its worst.
As of January, of this year, the local unemployment rate in Peterborough was about 12.8 per cent, said Sean Dooley, labour market information analyst at the Workforce Development Board.
“There were 2,800 fewer jobs in January 2021 compared to February 2020 in Peterborough,” he said.
At the lowest point of the pandemic (May 2020) that number was closer to 8,000 fewer jobs compared to February 2020.
“There are certainly very high numbers, especially when you compare it to other CMAs,” Dooley said.
It could be related to some of the industries that play a large role in employment being impacted by the pandemic, he said.
“Peterborough has a really
prominent tourism industry,” Dooley said. “When you are looking at some of those industries that were hardest hit, such as retail, entertainment, that is where some of the job losses are coming from.”
The pandemic has had a sector-specific impact, with different groups and ages affected differently, said Stu Harrison, president and CEO of the Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce.
“The three groups that have been most effected would be women, youth and new Canadians,” he said. “It’s important to look through that lens when you are thinking about who this is affecting and what are we going to do about it.”
Female workers were more impacted than male workers, the report states. Meanwhile, young workers aged 15 to 24 were hit hard as well during the same period with employment falling nearly five times as fast for workers aged 25 and over.
The amount of people that were actively looking for work in the Peterborough area, or the labour participation rate, Dooley said, was far lower than the provincial average.
“The participation rate in Peterborough is 56 per cent,” he said. “This is below the provincial average of 64.8 per cent.
That could be because the Peterborough area has a higher rate of older people who might not seek work as much as other age demographics.
“It might make sense that they are less likely to participate in the labour force,” Dooley said. “When we look at those job losses going back to last February, last March, there are certainly very high numbers, especially when you compare it to other CMA’s, part of that could be due to the population in the area.”
Those working in these jobs are not proportionate to our population, he said, especially when it comes to seeing more older workers, younger workers and women in these sectors being affected.
“It is certainly not an even playing field when we start looking where those job losses are occurring,” he said.
Ontario lost 355,000 jobs last year, while another 765,000 people had work hours cut. Youth unemployment jumped to 22 per cent, the report found. The job losses were the single largest annual decline on record, the Financial Accountability Office said.