COVID-19 costs Niagara 11,000 jobs in one month
Unemployment rate jumps to 8.6% with service sector hardest hit
More than 11,000 people in Niagara lost their employment between midFebruary and mid-March, evidence of the toll COVID-19 has had on the local economy.
The services industry was hardest hit, absorbing about 9,000 of those layoffs with the rest lost by goodsproducing businesses, said Statistics Canada’s monthly national labour force survey.
Next month’s report will almost certainly be just as grim, said Adam Durrant, operations and research manager for the Niagara Workplace Planning Board, which provides analysis and data on the local labour market.
“One could hope (for a levelling off of job losses), but this is unprecedented in what we’re looking at in terms of the decline from just February to March,” he said.
With so many forces at play, “what April is going to look like is changing on a day over day basis.”
Those variables include: more nonessential businesses possibly being ordered closed; how quickly Ontario can flatten the COVID-19 curve; and how businesses respond to government wage subsidies aimed at keeping people on the job.
In March, Niagara’s unemployment rate rose to 8.6 per cent — a steep jump from February’s 5.9 per cent. By comparison, the national
unemployment rate moved to 7.8 per cent, up 2.2 per cent from February. Overall, the report showed Canada lost just over one million jobs last month.
Niagara’s hardest-hit sector, services, employed about 147,200 people in February.
Of the 9,000 jobs it lost last month, Durrant said, “generally it looks like accommodations and food services saw the most employment decrease,” losing nearly 13 per cent of its 26,000 jobs.
Niagara Falls Tourism president Janice Thomson called COVID-19’s impact “extraordinary, like nothing anyone’s ever seen before.
“The (hotel) occupancy numbers are as low as you could ever imagine” and food services are hurting just as badly.
Her agency, which includes about 400 members, has been working on a recovery plan and updating its website, where a new feature offers virtual tours of the city.
It’s also working with the provincial and federal governments and national industry groups.
“That was one of the questions on our Destination Canada conference call today: When does anyone project this will end, and will it be the same across the country?” Thomson said.
“Everything’s a total unknown.”
She said business owners are looking at the government wage subsidies.
“The question then is, what are people going to be doing in certain jobs if they’re back … what tasks can there be for them if there’s no business?”
Across Canada, Ontario lost the most jobs last month followed by Quebec.
What makes Durrant doubtful about next month’s outlook is that this month’s report is based on data collected the week of March 15.
“I think what we are seeing here is the data was collected just as the situation was starting to become particularly challenging for Niagara, and for Ontario and Canada as a whole.
“In some ways I think we need to be braced for seeing another month like this.”
If there is a bright spot, he said, it’s that some employers still have a demand for more workers.
“The scope of it is not as large as it would have been at this time last year — it’s about 50 per cent of what it would have been at this time last year,” he said.