A total of 21,000 new jobs were created in B.C. last month, as the unemployment rate came in at 4.9 per cent, a level not seen since prior to the pandemic.
Ravi Kahlon, Minister of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation, said Friday that B.C. continues to lead the country in economic recovery, after recovering all jobs lost at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Now, 84,000 more people are working in B.C. than prior to the pandemic — the highest job-recovery rate in Canada at 103.2 per cent,” he said.
In Greater Victoria, the unemployment rate inched up to 4.2 per cent last month from 3.9 per cent in January.
The capital region’s unemployment rate still remains one of the lowest in Canada, however, behind only Belleville, Ont., at 2.3 per cent, and Sherbrooke and Quebec City, tied at 2.8 per cent.
Abbotsford-Mission also came in at an unemployment rate of 4.2 per cent in February.
Year-over-year comparisons in Greater Victoria show increases in job numbers in such areas as health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services, construction, and finance, insurance, real estate and rentals and leasing.
Numbers dropped in transportation, warehousing and public administration.
Statistics Canada said the Canadian economy added 337,000 jobs in February, more than offsetting the loss of 200,000 jobs in January as the unemployment rate fell below pre-pandemic levels.
The national unemployment rate dropped to 5.5 per cent in February compared with 6.5 per cent in the first month of the year.
That is the lowest it’s been since it was 5.7 per cent in February 2020 just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Statistics Canada says the federal unemployment rate would have been 7.4 per cent last month had it included in calculations people who wanted a job but did not look for one.
The majority of the decline in the ranks of Canada’s unemployed came from people called back to work in February after a temporary layoff one month earlier, as provinces tightened restrictions to slow the spread of the Omicron variant.
Eight provinces saw job increases as restrictions eased, although Alberta and New Brunswick stayed flat.
Gains in February were notable in sectors hardest hit by public health restrictions, including accommodation and food services, which was up by 114,000 jobs.
Statistics Canada also says the proportion of the working-age population with a job rose in February to 61.8 per cent, marking the first time that rate returned to its pre-pandemic levels.
Overall, the agency says the labour force in February was 1.9 per cent, or 369,100 jobs, above levels recorded in February 2020.
The February jobs report suggests the labour market is at, or very close to, full employment, says Royce Mendes, head of macro strategy at Desjardins.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce warns that is going to make it difficult to fill the nearly one million job vacancies across the country.
Leah Nord, the chamber’s senior director of workforce strategies, says the general policy response from governments to acute labour shortages has been underwhelming.
— With The Canadian Press
