Residents in the Cariboo are slowly heading back to work as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take its toll.
The region gained just 100 jobs in October and saw it’s unemployment rate remain the same as last month at 10.5 percent.
Vincent Ferrao is a Labour Market Analyst with Stats Canada.
“The survey indicates that there are 79,100 people who are working, this compared with an estimate of 81,000 the same period a year ago, so that gives us a slight decline of about 1,900.”
Ferrao said that the region’s unemployment had seen a considerable increase compared to last year.
“At this same time, it was 6.9 percent, so it’s up 3.6 percentage points over 12 months.”
Despite the slow increase in the number of people working, the region’s 79,000 jobs are the most the region has seen in 2020. However, the unemployment rate has remained steady at around 10.5 since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Provincially, B.C. continues to bounce back from COVID-19 as the provincial unemployment rate was 8,0 percent in October, down from 84 in September, with the province adding close to 78,000 jobs.
B.C. has the fourth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, with Saskatchewan (6.4), Manitoba (7.1), and Quebec (7.7) having a lower rate.
Nationally, Canada saw a slight decrease of 0.1 percent in its unemployment rate, bringing it down to 8.9 percent, and added 83,600 jobs.