The Canadian economy lost 200,000 jobs in January, and Kelowna was at the forefront of that slide.
The unemployment rate in the Central Okanagan metropolitan area increased a whopping 1.5% from December to January. The percentage of unemployed last month was 7.2%, which is the highest it has been since September 2020. That is when the figure was 8% due to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kelowna usually has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, but its January mark made it one of the highest in Canada. In fact, only seven of the 37 metropolitan areas that are measured each month had a higher unemployment rate.
The belief is that most of January’s job losses across the country were temporary positions, brought on by the Omicron variant that resulted in more lockdowns. Statistics Canada reported that most of the 200,000 job losses were in Ontario and Quebec, which had some of the strictest lockdown measures in place.
The decrease marked the largest drop since January 2021, when the economy shed 207,800 jobs, Statistics Canada said Friday.
Last month’s Kelowna labour force, or the number of people who were able to work was 113,200, which was down from 114,800 in December. The number of people working, however, plunged from 108,300 to 105,000 last month.
Analysts believe since Omicron is showing signs of peaking there will be another swift rebound on the national job front.
The same unemployment surge happened in the entire Thompson Okanagan region, as the rate jumped from 4.6% in December to 5.9% in January.
— with files from The Canadian Press
