Wage growth accelerates despite drop in full-time roles and sector-wide employment declines
Canada’s youth posted their lowest employment rate since 1998 in July, as the labour market shed 41,000 jobs and recorded its weakest performance in three years, according to Statistics Canada.
The national unemployment rate held at 6.9 percent, with 1.6 million people jobless.
The decline was led by youth aged 15 to 24, who lost 34,000 positions and saw their employment rate drop to 53.6 percent. Their unemployment rate rose to 14.6 percent, the highest since September 2010 excluding pandemic years.
Among racialized youth, Arab workers had the highest unemployment rate at 26.4 percent, followed by Black (23.4 percent), Chinese (20.5 percent), Filipino (19.4 percent), and South Asian (17.1 percent) youth.
Employment losses were concentrated in full-time work (-51,000) and the private sector (-39,000), as reported by Statistics Canada.
The largest industry declines occurred in information, culture and recreation (-29,000; -3.3 percent) and construction (-22,000; -1.3 percent), with smaller drops in business, building and other support services (-19,000; -2.8 percent) and health care and social assistance (-17,000; -0.6 percent).
Transportation and warehousing added 26,000 jobs, its first gain since January.
Regionally, employment fell in Alberta (-17,000; -0.6 percent) and British Columbia (-16,000; -0.5 percent), while Saskatchewan posted the only gain (+3,500; +0.6 percent).
Alberta’s unemployment rate rose to 7.8 percent, British Columbia’s to 5.9 percent, and Saskatchewan maintained the lowest provincial rate at 5.0 percent.
According to RBC Economics, the losses were not concentrated in trade-exposed sectors, with manufacturing and retail largely unchanged.
BMO chief economist Doug Porter said the figures mark “an unambiguously weak report” that signals a soft start to the third quarter.
Indeed senior economist Brendon Bernard pointed to persistent “weak youth job numbers” and ongoing struggles for the long-term unemployed, whose share rose to 23.8 percent — the highest since 1998 excluding the pandemic.
Average hourly wages rose 3.3 percent year over year to $36.16, up from 3.2 percent in June, while total hours worked declined by 0.2 percent.
The layoff rate held steady at 1.1 percent despite trade uncertainty, as reported by Statistics Canada.
