8% jobless rate ‘not good news,’ but not unexpected, Harper says
by investor on 14/04/09 at 7:35 pm
Canada’s employment rate hitting a seven-year high of eight per cent and the economy shedding another 61,300 full-time jobs in March, was not unexpected, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday in Edmonton.
“This is the kind of level of unemployment we were expecting in the budget. That’s why we’ve come forward with the kinds of programs and … the amount of dollars we have to deal with this … during this and the next fiscal year,” said Harper, responding to new job data released by Statistics Canada Thursday.
He was speaking at a press conference at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, where he reannounced $2,000 bonuses for people who complete apprentice training, outlined in the January budget.
“Obviously, we’re never very happy about unemployment. All of these increases are causing real hardship to Canadian families. At the same time, we do have good social safety nets and we do have good systems of retraining that we are enhancing.”
Harper reminded reporters that Canada is relatively better off than the United States where he said five million jobs have been lost since the start of this recession last fall.
“That’s what’s pulling us down and we have to see that get turned around,” he said.
He also highlighted his government’s move to increase the employment insurance benefit period by five weeks and hire more workers to process the backlog of EI claims.
Statistics Canada employment chart
Statistics Canada said a total of 79,500 full-time jobs disappeared in March, while employment in part-time work grew by 18,200.
Economists had a consensus projection that the country would lose a total of about 55,000 jobs last month, although some of the forecasts expected a loss of more than 90,000 positions.
Since hitting its most recent peak in October 2008, employment across the country has fallen each month, with net losses totalling 357,000. Statistics Canada said that, in percentage terms, this is the largest decline over a five-month period since the 1982 recession.
Since October, full-time employment has declined by 387,000, while part-time numbers have edged up by 30,000.
The largest declines in employment were seen in British Columbia, which lost 23,000 jobs; Alberta, where 15,000 positions were shed; and Ontario, which lost another 11,000 jobs. The three provinces have the fastest rate of employment decreases since October.
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