Job creation stalled on P.E.I. for almost a year

A seven-year run of rapid job growth on P.E.I., interrupted by the pandemic, appears to be over.

Statistics Canada's labour force survey for July, released on Friday, listed the Island's unemployment rate at 8.9 per cent, an increase from 8.0 per cent in June. The change was mostly due to more Islanders in the workforce as the province's population continues to grow.

P.E.I.'s recent population boom started in 2017, and outside of 2020 it has been matched by a boom in the number of jobs. That has lead to a years-long stretch of historically-low unemployment rates.

Statistics Canada's unemployment rate records for P.E.I. go back to 1976. For those first three years the annual rate was just below 10 per cent. It climbed into double digits in 1979, and stayed there for 37 years.

It fell to 9.9 per cent in 2017 and dropped further the next two years. The pandemic forced it above 10 per cent again in 2020, but then it resumed its slide. In 2023 the rate was a record low of 7.3 per cent.

The fall in the rate coincided with rapid population growth. While there were more people looking for work, population growth was pushing economic growth.

In September of 2023 there were 92,100 jobs on the Island, almost 20,000 more than there had been in 2016, more than enough for the 15,000 Islanders who had been added to the workforce.

But from September to July the trend in job creation has levelled off. There have been some ups and downs, but the 91,700 jobs in July represents very little change from last September.

The population, however, has continued to grow. There are an extra 2,000 people in the workforce, and that has driven up the unemployment rate from 6.6 per cent last September to 8.9 per cent in July.