Pandemic has hit minorities harder
South Asian and Chinese Canadians have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic-induced economic downturn, charting significantly higher unemployment rates than other visible and non-visible minority groups, new race-based data from Statistics Canada show.
The unemployment rate among South Asians between July 2019 and July 2020 increased by 9.1 percentage points; among Chinese Canadians, that figure was 8.4. The year-over-year unemployment rate increase was smallest for white Canadians at 4.4 percentage points, the data show. The unemployment rate for Black and Filipino Canadians increased by roughly 6.3 percentage points in the past year.
Overall, Canada’s unemployment rate decreased to 10.9 per cent in July, the second month in a row the country has gained jobs since the unemployment rate hit a peak of 13.7 per cent in May.
Certain visible minority groups had job losses almost double that of white Canadians last month. For example, the unemployment rate was 17.8 per cent in the South Asian community, with one in five South Asian women out of work. The unemployment rate among Black Canadians was 17.3 per cent, while white Canadians had an unemployment rate of 9.3 per cent.
This is the first time Statcan has tracked race-based data on job losses, a move that many economists have praised given how uneven the virus’s impact on different sectors of the labour market has been during the past four months.
“One of the benefits of this pandemic is it has led to newer and more thorough data sources,” said Stephen Tapp, deputy chief economist at Export Development Canada. “It is pretty clear that the labour market impact has been harder, bigger and worse for visible minorities in Canada.”
One of the reasons why unemployment might be higher among visible minority groups is the concentration of certain racialized groups in industries that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
It will take months before we have a true picture of the real cost of the pandemic on different racialized groups, says David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, because there is still insufficient jobs-focused data by race.
Beyond race, July’s unemployment numbers were “somewhat of a good news story,” says Brendon Bernard, an economist at the Indeed Canada jobs site. “In the grand scheme of things, the reopening of the economy has brought a lot of people back to work ... However, there were signs that further progress might not be as rapid, as a return to work among those temporarily laid off was the prime source of job gains.”
The labour data indicates that 345,000 part-time jobs were created in July, versus just 73,000 fulltime jobs. The growth in part-time work has far outpaced full-time jobs over the past three months.
Overall, the total number of Canadians out of work in July was 2.3 million, 58 per cent fewer than in April. Most of the employment gains have come in the accommodation and food services sectors, data show.