Andrew Fields, a Labour Market Analyst with Stats Canada, says there were 87,000 people working in the Cariboo region in August, which is up by 4,000 over August of 2020, and basically the same as August of 2019.
He says the employment rate has followed the same pattern.
“That caused the unemployment rate to go down to 6.2 percent. It was 10.6 percent in August of 2020. It was also 6.2 in August of 2019.”
Fields says there were a few sectors that showed improvement last month.
“Accommodation and Food Services, which is sort of a fancy way of saying restaurants and bars. That had the largest increase over this period, not surprising because it also suffered the most during the downturn of the pandemic. But there was also an increase in manufacturing and public administration.”
He says there were also some small declines.
“Transportation and Warehousing, which ranges from trucking to rail to careers, that was down. There were also declines in other services which could be anything from landscaping to personal hygiene, things like hairdressers and things like that.”
BC’s unemployment rate was also 6.2 percent in August.
Manitoba and Quebec were lower, but Fields says BC is the only province to surpass its pre-pandemic level of employment.
The national unemployment rate is 7.1 percent, down 0.4 percent from July, and the lowest its been since the start of the pandemic.
Breakdown by provinces.
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- Manitoba 5.7%
- Quebec 5.8%
- British Columbia 6.2%
- Saskatchewan 7.0%
- Ontario 7.6%
- Nova Scotia 7.8%
- Alberta 7.9%
- New Brunswick 9.3%
- PEI 10.6%
- Newfoundland and Labrador 12.1%
