For a province poised to lead the country in economic growth in 2016, British Columbia ended the year on a surprisingly less-than-positive note on the job front.
B.C. lost 7,900 jobs in the month, according to Statistics Canada, with most of the losses—6,200 positions—in full-time work. The unemployment rate increased five ticks over the month to 6.7%. Year-over-year, the picture isn’t quite as bleak; the province added 51,600 jobs in 2015 – but most of these were in part-time work.
Vancouver alone has outperformed the rest of the province and has seen its unemployment rate drop over the past year from 6.0% to 5.7%. Toronto has also seen its rate drop with a dip of a full percentage point to 7%. Both of these cities jumped up in terms of position relative to other Canadian cities during 2015.
“This clearly highlights how these cities have been relatively immune, if not benefiting, from the plunge in oil prices,” said BMO Economics’ Robert Kavcic.
“Both are seeing 4%-plus job growth, near 2% population growth and falling jobless rates – and yet many are still surprised that these housing markets are performing so well.”
Across Canada, 22,800 jobs were added in December, offsetting a drop in November and beating analysts’ projections of 8,000 positions. The unemployment rate held steady at 7.1%. Both private- and public- sector jobs were down, however, and all of the increase was related to a 40,300 jump in the number of those Canadians working as self-employed.
“The quality of the jobs being created suggests that cracks are emerging in the labour market’s surprising resilience,” said Andrew Grantham of CIBC Economics.
Looking at 2015 as a whole, Canada added over 158,000 jobs and the good news is that most of these—151,000—were full-time positions.
Goods-producing jobs fell by 0.5% and, as expected given the continuing downward direction of the price of crude, the biggest percentage loss—6.8%—was in the natural resource sector, which includes oil and gas extraction along with forestry, fishing and mining. A total of 25,600 jobs were cut in these industries over the past year. Manufacturing helped offset this loss, with an increase of 35,900 jobs or 2.1%.
The services-producing sector fared better and grew 1.3% year-over-year. The biggest gains were in professional, scientific and technical services (up 5.2%) and health care and social assistance (up 3.8%).
