February was not a great month for the Cariboo in terms of employment.
Vincent Ferrao, a Labour Market Analyst with Stats Canada, goes over some of the numbers…
“The February unemployment rate for the Cariboo region was 7.8 percent, and that compares with a 6.5 percent rate in February of last year, so it’s up by 1.3 percentage points.”
7.8 percent is the highest the Cariboo’s jobless rate has been since it was 8.9 percent in April of 2017.
Ferrao says there about a thousand fewer people working in the region last month compared to a year ago…
“There were more people working in retail and wholesale compared with a year ago, and for declines we have fewer people working in manufacturing.”
Ferrao says the main reason for the jump in the unemployment rate however, is that there were a lot more people looking for work, 6400 last month compared to 53-hundred in February of 2019.
BC no longer has the lowest jobless rate in the country.
Quebec has that honour at 4.5 percent.
BC’s unemployment rate for February was an even 5 percent, up from 4.6, and tied with Manitoba for second place overall.
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