Windsor's unemployment rate drops slightly in September

According to the latest data from Statistics Canada, Windsor's unemployment rate dropped last month. 

September saw a rate of 9.8 per cent compared to 10.1 per cent in August. 

Earlier this year, Windsor was the Canadian city with the highest jobless rate — reaching a peak of 16.7 per cent in May. 

Meanwhile, Canada's economy added 378,000 new jobs in September, almost all of which were full-time positions.

September's job gains mean that the job market is now within 720,000 positions of where it was in February, before widespread COVID-19 restrictions were introduced in Canada. 

March and April saw a cumulative record of three million jobs lost in Canada, before the numbers started to slowly bounce back. Since June, each month has seen small improvements in the jobless rate, until September when hiring picked up most significantly.

That surge means the economy has officially recovered more than three-quarters of the jobs it had lost. For comparison purposes, the U.S. has only gained back a little more than half of the jobs it lost.

September's hiring was enough to push the national jobless rate down to 9 per cent. For context, in February, Canada's unemployment rate was 5.6 per cent, before COVID-19 walloped the economy, and pushed it up to a high of 13.7 per cent in May, the highest rate on record. It has fallen steadily in each of the four months since then.

The last time Canada's economy was hit by anything remotely similar to the impact of COVID-19 was the recession of 2008 and 2009. At that time, the jobless rate was 6.2 per cent going into it, before peaking at 8.7 per cent eight months later in June 2009.

It took nine years for the rate to return to pre-recession levels.