The Cariboo region saw a pretty big year over year jump in the unemployment rate in September.
Vincent Ferrao is a Labour Market Analyst with Stats Canada…
“The unemployment rate came in at 10.5 percent for September 2020, and at the same time last year it was less than that, it was 6.8 percent, so it went up significantly by 3.7 percentage points.”
The 10.5 percent recorded last month was also slightly higher than the 10.2 percent rate in August.
Ferrao says there were less people working in the Cariboo region last month, but the main reason for the jump in the unemployment rate was the increase in the number of people actually looking for work…
“We had 79,000 people working this September.  A year ago there were 82,000 people so a decline of about three thousand.  93-hundred people unemployed looking for work this September, compared to 6 thousand a year ago.”
Ferrao says the biggest decline in jobs were in the natural resources sector.
He says there were modest increases however, in retail and wholesale trade and healthcare and social assistance.
BC seems to be bouncing back from COVID as the provincial unemployment rate was 8.4 percent in September, down from 10.7 in August.
Ferrao says Saskatchewan has the lowest unemployment rate in the country at 6.8 percent.
Manitoba is next at 7.0 followed by Quebec at 7.4, Nova Scotia at 7.9 and then BC.
Ontario was sitting at 9.5 percent in September.
Newfoundland and Labrador is the highest at 14.8 percent.