Canada lost 9,400 jobs in June, jobless rate ticks up to 7.1%
34,000 jobs lost in Ontario alone during the month
Canada's economy shed 9,400 jobs in June, enough to inch the unemployment rate up slightly to 7.1 per cent.
Statistics Canada said Friday there were actually more than 33,00 new full-time jobs created during the month. But that was offset by a larger drop of 43,000 part-time positions.
If Alberta is stripped out of the national total, there would have been no job growth in the past year- BMO economist Doug Porter
Provincially, there were 34,000 fewer jobs in Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador also saw a decrease. Meanwhile, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island all saw job increases.
Economists had actually been expecting a small increase in the number of jobs in Ontario because of activity surrounding the provincial election campaign.
That didn't happen.
The province's hard-hit manufacturing sector had another bad month, as employment in that sector fell by another 13,600 jobs to a record low, dating back to 1976.
The job losses weren't confined to manufacturing alone, however. Ten of the 16 job categories that the data agency tracks posted losses in the month.
For comparison purposes, the U.S. currently has a 6.1 per cent unemployment rate, a six-year low. But Canada and the U.S. calculate their jobs figures differently, and when Canada's numbers are processed using the U.S. methodology, the two countries have the same unemployment rate — 6.1 per cent.
June's jobs data means that Canada has produced a mere 72,000 jobs in the last 12 months. That's the lowest annual figure since February 2010. Worse still is that much of those gains are coming from just a single province — Alberta.
"If Alberta is stripped out of the national total, there would have been no job growth in the past year," BMO economist Doug Porter noted.
The Canadian dollar plunged on the news, down 0.76 cents US to 93.16 cents as economists anticipate the poor result may cause the Bank of Canada to trim its growth expectations for the economy in next week's monetary policy report, while signalling any hike in interest rates is at least another year away.