Statcan says 213K jobs lost in January

Losses were concentrated in Ontario, Quebec as lockdowns hurt retail

OTTAWA — Canada’s labour market saw months of gains wiped out in a matter of weeks as widespread lockdowns and school closures erased 212,800 jobs in January, hitting mothers and youth particularly hard.

The monthly job declines were the worst seen since last April.

It sent the unemployment rate up 0.6 percentage points to 9.4 per cent, the highest rate since August.

The unemployment rate would have been 12 per cent in January had Statistics Canada included in its calculations Canadians who wanted to work but didn’t search for a job.

Losses in January marked a second straight month that the labour market contracted after 63,000 positions disappeared in December to break a streak of monthly gains that began in May 2020.

After clawing back from an unprecedented drop of three million jobs over March and April, the country plunged backwards and is now short 858,300 jobs, or 4.5 per cent, of employment levels from last February before the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

January’s losses were concentrated in Ontario and Quebec where lockdowns and restrictions closed businesses and schools to rein in rising COVID-19 case counts.

Steep declines in part-time work, particularly among teenagers, and in service-industry jobs, including retail, overshadowed small upticks in full-time workers and in goods-producing sectors.

Employment fell faster for core-aged women than men and was particularly acute for mothers with elementary-aged children.

With schools closed and students learning remotely, parents across the country saw the largest monthly jobs decline since last April.

Since last year, women have dropped out of the labour force faster than men to take care of their children, on top of being overrepresented in industries targeted by increased restrictions, said Kaylie Tiessen, an economist and policy analyst for Unifor.