Unemployment in Canada fell to 6.9% in September 2021 from 7.1% in August, as anticipated, for the fourth consecutive month. Because many provinces had adopted or intended to impose proof-of-vaccination requirements, which enabled non-essential venues to reopen with more safety after the outbreak in February of last year, it was the lowest unemployment rate since then.
Self-employment, on the other hand, hardly budged from its pre-pandemic levels, falling by 7.7 percent (-222,000) in the month.
In August, the percentage of people who worked at least half of their normal hours from home dropped by 1.8 percentage points to 24.0%, the lowest share since the outbreak of the epidemic in April. During the first nationwide shutdown in April 2020, two-thirds (66.8 percent) of individuals working from home said their regular work location was outside their house.
Work absences, which are more common in the summer when employees are on vacation, may have an impact on the number of persons employed at various locations in addition to increases or losses in employment and changes in the work location.
Young People And Employment
In August, part-time employment increased by 22,000 (or +0.9 percent) among young people aged 15 to 24. During most of the pandemic era, there was a noticeable disparity in the employment results of male and female adolescents. In August, 35,000 more women aged 15 to 24 found work, an increase of 2.8%. As a consequence, for the first time since February 2020, employment among young women has virtually restored to its previous level. In addition to that, it should be noted that many people during pandemics have lost their jobs. Until the government could find the solution for the increased unemployment rate, some people became self-employed, including through the starting of trading Forex. Forex market is the world’s largest financial market in the world. Because of the increased interest in FX trading, many Canadian started searching for the list of top brokers in Canada, in order to find the best-matching brokers for their strategies. However, that wasn’t the case for underage youngsters, who since May, have had notable employment increases (+140,000; +17.8%) leading to a growing employment recovery gap between younger and older youth. In August, there were 50,000 more adolescents working (+5.8%) than there were in February 2020, but there were 92,000 fewer young adults working in August (-5.3 percent ). Results from the Long-Term Follow-up Survey (LFS) will reveal if this upward tendency continues into the autumn when many students return to school.
Returning students’ job market results mirror the difficulties older youngsters confront.
Students who were enrolled full-time in school in March and want to do so again this autumn are tracked from May through August as part of the LFS. Because the published statistics are not seasonally adjusted, only year-over-year comparisons can be performed.
Summer 2019 (52.3 percent) was 2.0 percentage points lower than summer 2020 (almost 10 percentage points higher), with the average employment rate for returning students aged 15 to 24 is 50.3% from May to August (40.4 percent ).
Compared to the typical summer work rate of 56.2% in 2019, the female student employment rate fell by 3.6%, mainly because the employment rate in May 2021 was much lower. When compared to pre-pandemic levels, the male student infection rate (47.6 percent) has remained relatively stable.
In the summer of 2021, younger returning students did better on the job market than older returning students.
Unemployment Rate Decreases
Unemployment in Canada dropped to 7.1% for the first time since the beginning of the epidemic in August, a decrease of 0.4 percentage points. Although there were some short-term rises in the unemployment rate in the autumn of 2020 and spring of 2021, the rate has been trending lower since it peaked in May 2020 at 13.7%.
In August, the number of males in their mid-40s who were unemployed dropped by 43,000 (a 9.3% decline). Though it fell by six percentage points to 6.2%, this group’s unemployment rate is still 1.4% higher than before the pandemic began at 4.8%.
Over the course of the month of August, the number of individuals who were unemployed dropped by 26,000 (or 7.3%). This drop was nearly exclusively concentrated among older women. Women aged 65 and over had a higher unemployment rate of 1.8 percentage points, while males aged 65 and over had a higher unemployment rate of 2.4 percentage points.
In August, the unemployment rate for those in their 15s and 20s stayed almost the same.
For the second month in a row, the unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 69 who are members of groups classified as visible minorities was 9.8%. (not seasonally adjusted). Only Chinese Canadians have seen a decrease in their unemployment rate, according to Statistics Canada (down 2.3 percentage points to 9.5 percent; not seasonally adjusted).
People who are not Indigenous or members of a visible minority had their unemployment rate rose for the second month in a row, rising by 0.5 percentage points to 7.0 percent.
