Canadian unemployment rate rises to 6.4%, with student summer jobs especially hard to come by

The Canadian economy was virtually unchanged in June, shedding 1,400 jobs, while unemployment rose 0.2 percentage points to 6.4 per cent, Statistics Canada said on Friday.

The unemployment rate has trended upward for more than a year, with 1.4 million people unemployed in June, according to the agency's monthly Labour Force Survey.

Of those who were unemployed in May, one-fifth became employed by June, though this was a lower proportion than the pre-pandemic average for the same months.

Fewer people worked in transportation and housing and public administration, while jobs were added to the food services and accommodation sector as well as the agriculture sector.

The unemployment rate also rose among Black and South Asian Canadians between 25 and 54, the data agency noted.

For Black Canadians, the figure rose by 4.4 percentage points to 11.9 per cent from the same time last year. For South Asian Canadians, that rate rose by 1.7 percentage points to 6.7 per cent in June. Both figures are non-seasonally adjusted.

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Average hourly wages rose 5.4 per cent in June compared to the same time last year, and were up from 5.1 per cent in May. 

"This report drives home the point that the Canadian labour market can simply no longer be considered tight — in fact, it is quickly tipping in the other direction," wrote BMO economist Douglas Porter in a note.

He noted that a softer job market raises the odds of a Bank of Canada rate cut. But the central bank has also been carefully watching rising wages, which "remain the very definition of sticky [and] will give the Bank pause," Porter wrote.

WATCH | The unemployment rate climbed to 6.4 per cent in June: 

Unemployment up to 6.4% in June, Statistics Canada says

5 months ago

Duration 3:24

CBC's Scott Peterson looks at the latest labour market data for Statistics Canada, which show unemployment at the highest level since January 2022, when it was at 6.5 per cent.

The youth unemployment rate was "particularly painful" in June, Porter added. That rate, for people between 15 and 24, rose 0.9 percentage points to 13.5 per cent last month.

It's the highest the rate has been since September 2014, with exception made for 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.

A tough summer job market for students

"I think in general, when we look at ... the ups and downs of the job market, youth are the most sensitive," said Brendon Bernard, an economist at Indeed Canada. 

"When the labour market gets strong, the youth really benefit. And when things weaken, we see that they're the ones who get hit. And so over the past year or so, we've seen the Canadian job numbers deteriorate, and they've especially deteriorated among those 15 to 24," Bernard said.

To that point, the summer job market is getting trickier to navigate for some students.

The employment rate among returning students — those trying to find summer jobs before returning to school full-time in the fall — fell to 46.8 per cent.

That rate is the lowest since June 1998, with the first summer of the pandemic (June 2020) being an exception. It's also a "notable decline" from the 53.7 per cent high reported in June 2022, the data agency said.

Christian Kyle, student union president at the University of British Columbia, said he's spoken with various UBC students who are struggling to find work for the summer and beyond.

"It's more important than ever to have a summer job, [given] the cost of housing in Vancouver, the cost of living, the food, everything," Kyle said.

He called it a "compounding issue," where it's both increasingly less affordable to be a student and increasingly harder to find a job to compensate for those cost of living challenges.

The unemployment rate was 15.9 percent for returning students, marking an increase of 3.8 percentage points from a year earlier. The data shows that students are having more difficulty finding work in the summer job market.

"This is likely a temporary issue for young people," said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets. "It really relates to the lack of that traditional summer job availability."

Last summer, an abundance of jobs at restaurants, bars and airports meant that employers were "desperately looking" for hires, with students filling some of those roles, Shenfeld said.

That isn't the case this year. But while the summer job market might be tougher for returning students this year, "it won't necessarily affect them by the time they finish their studies."