In July, Canada’s unemployment rate remained stable at 4.9 percent, matching the previous month’s record low.
In July, the overall unemployment rate stayed at one million. In addition, 426,000 individuals who desired employment but did not actively seek employment did not fall within the definition of unemployment. For the sixth consecutive month, there was not much of a change. The adjusted unemployment rate, which takes into consideration this prospective labor supply source, was 6.8 percent as of this writing, which is the lowest level since comparable data have been available since 1997.
Additionally, according to Statistics Canada, the loss of 31,000 jobs in Canada’s employment is not a substantial change. Between May and July, Canada shed roughly 74,000 jobs, but between May 2021 and May 2022, employment rose by more than one million.
Having said that, Canada’s employment has declined for the second month running in July. Additionally, while having a record-low unemployment rate, Canada still has a tight labor market due to the more than one million open positions. According to RBC economist Carrie Freestone in an economic update, “two consecutive months of decreasing employment shows that the Canadian labor market is coming into capacity constraints, with little room for upside movement.” Despite a decline in job postings, there are still a lot of open positions that need to be filled, and there aren’t many jobless Canadians who are qualified to fill them
Demand for employees is still quite high.
The number of people employed by the public sector decreased by 51,000 (1.2 percent) in July, marking the sector’s first dip in a year. Ontario and Quebec saw the greatest concentration of the decline. Despite the month-over-month dip, there was a 5.3 percent (+215,000) increase in public sector employment since July 2021.
After dropping by 59,000 (-2.2%) in June, the number of self-employed workers rose by 34,000 (+1.3%) in July. Despite this rise, self-employment was still 214,000 (-7.4%) below its pre-pandemic February 2020 level and was flat year over year.
