> Greater Victoria’s unemployment rate soars to 7.2%,
April unemployment numbers rise across the country; Victoria now at 7.2%
Unemployment has soared, with two million people losing their jobs in April amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Greater Victoria’s unemployment rate for April is 7.2%, B.C.’s is at 11.5% and Canada’s is 13%, Statistics Canada said in its monthly labour force survey.
The capital region’s unemployment rate had been 3.2% in February, when it was among the lowest in the country, before rising to 4.6% last month.
The job losses are “unprecedented” and “staggering,” B.C.’s Finance Minister Carole James said Friday. Before the pandemic, the province had an unemployment rate of 5%, the lowest in Canada. In the past month alone, the province lost 264,000 jobs. Combine that with the numbers for March, when the virus first affected the economy, and the total comes to 396,500.
“The numbers today in fact aren’t the full picture,” James said. “Because many of those who lost employment are counted as not in the labour force, rather than unemployed. Because they wanted work, but they didn’t look for work because of the lack of opportunities right now, because of COVID-19.”
Many businesses in the capital region are closed and boarded up, some by choice and others because of provincial health and safety regulations.
Businesses relying on tourism — one of the foundations of Greater Victoria’s economy — have been among the hardest hit.
The number of people employed in the capital region in April slid by 10,200 from March to 187,700, Statistics Canada said.
For a region covering Vancouver Island and the mainland coast, the unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) climbed to 8.4% from 3.7% the same time a year ago.
James said all sectors have been affected, but the worst hit are accommodation and food operations, and wholesale and retail trade. “In total, 47% of the job losses we saw in March and April combined were in these sectors.”
Since the province’s emergency benefit for unemployed workers was introduced a week ago, more than 400,000 applications have been approved for the one-time $1,000 payment, James said.
B.C. announced this week that it is embarking on a staged re-opening plan. It has set aside $1.5 billion to help the provincial economy recover.
Asked if B.C. is in the midst of the worst of it, James said: “I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, I’m afraid. “But I think now that we have started our gradual restart on the economy, we will be watching very carefully the months of May and June.”
Once it’s clear what businesses open and who returns to work, she said, “we will have a better sense of what we are looking at.”
“I think we’ve got a hard road ahead. I don’t want to sugar-coat this.”
James said how the $1.5 billion is spent will depend on the “work that needs to happen sector-bysector and in a broad way across British Columbia.”
On a national level, more than one in five households say they are having difficulty meeting financial obligations, Statistics Canada said.
Among those who have lost jobs, young people have been disproportionately affected.
From February to April, employment among youth declined by 873,000, or 34.2%, the federal agency said.
Unemployment surged to 31.7% (not seasonally adjusted) for students ages 15 to 24 in April. This is “signalling that many could face difficulties in continuing to pay for their studies.”
Brian DePratto, senior economist for TD Economics, said the country hasn’t seen those kinds of numbers since the Great Depression. “And even then, the speed at which the current episode unfolded seems to have no identifiable precedent.” DePratto said even more telling than the number of lost jobs is the impact on hours worked.
A total of 2.5 million Canadians worked less than half their usual hours last month as a result of COVID-19, DePratto said.