Canada lost 17,000 jobs in May, pushing the unemployment rate up to 5.2 per cent, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
The decline is primarily driven by a 77,000 loss in jobs among youth aged 15 to 24. Meanwhile, employment increased by 63,000 among people aged 25 to 54. Men in this age range represented two-thirds of this growth, gaining 43,000 jobs.
Statistics Canada says the overall employment rate was “virtually unchanged,” with only a 0.1 per cent decrease in May. This is the first time since August 2022 that Canada has lost jobs; 326,000 jobs were gained between September 2022 to January 2023.
Average wages rose to $33.25 — a 5.1 per cent year-over-year increase. While the inflation numbers for May have not yet been released, this marks the fourth month in a row when the year-over-year wage increase is on track to outpace inflation, which was 4.4 per cent in April.
Statistics Canada reports that the industries that lost the most jobs in May were business, building and other support services, which lost 31,000 jobs, equivalent to a 4.4 per cent decline overall.
There were also 40,000 fewer self-employed workers, according to the report.
Youth can’t find work
Shaziah Jinnah Morsette, president of the University of Calgary Students’ Union, has been seeing students at her university struggle to find employment first hand. She says one in five students it recently surveyed have been able to find full-time work this summer.
“Often, this isn’t just summer full-time work that they want; it’s summer full-time work that they need,” said Jinnah Morsette, whose union represents over 28,000 undergraduate students. “That cost-of-living crunch, that affordability crunch is being really felt by post-secondary students, and has been for years.”
A hiring sign is posted at Sansotei Ramen in downtown Toronto on Thursday. According to a Statistics Canada report, 17,000 jobs were lost in Canada in May. (Aloysius Wong/CBC)
Jinnah Morsette says, in order to make ends meet, students will often settle for jobs that don’t develop skills relevant to their field of study or the careers they’re pursuing.
Dawn Desjardins, chief economist at Deloitte, says this is not uncommon.
“You do get those first jobs where you’re really learning skills that you don’t necessarily have from your education,” she said. “So yes, I think there’s a mismatch in a lot of ways across the economy in the labour market.”
However, Desjardins believes that the reality is not as “deep and dark” as it first appears, and should not be an immediate cause for concern.
“We see a lot of volatility in these numbers,” she said.
In Alberta, the youth unemployment rate was 11.3 per cent this May — double the overall provincial unemployment rate of 5.7 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.
Statistics Canada reports a particularly acute change in youth employment for returning students, especially young women between the ages of 20 and 24. In this group, although 69.5 per cent were employed in May 2022, only 63.8 per cent are employed as of this May. That is four per cent lower than the pre-pandemic rate recorded in May 2019.
“The landscape has changed,” Jinnah Morsette said. “This isn’t anything like 25 years ago where you could easily find a job over the summer [and] work to pay your year of tuition ahead.”
She said that the need to work increased hours takes students’ time away from extracurriculars, volunteering and their studies — all experiences that assist students when looking for jobs after graduation.
“Students aren’t able to access those things because they’re having to choose to take on those extra hours to continue to cover their bills,” said Jinnah Morsette. “That does take a toll — not only on their grades, but also on their mental health and their well-being.
“That leaves the Alberta economy behind — it leaves our Canadian economy behind.”
Service surge?
Although unemployment rose overall this past month, certain industries experienced job growth — including accommodation and food services, which gained 10,000 jobs in May.
“We are seeing people come to the doors asking for work,” said Denis Pires, general manager of the restaurant Bairrada Churrasqueira in Toronto. “However, they’re not qualified for the positions that we’re looking for.”
But compared to last year when there were fewer customers and more safety concerns from staff because of the pandemic, Pires says the atmosphere has changed. At their restaurant, the challenge now is the need to spend additional time and resources to train the new hires.
“The government stimulus has stopped, which is a big thing,” said Pires. “I think that is promoting people to look for jobs and be more serious.”
David Glantz, owner of Archive Tattoo, sits in his office on Friday. Glantz says he’s looking for one more person to join his team of five. (Shawn Benjamin/CBC)
David Glantz, the owner of Archive Tattoo in Toronto, is looking to hire one more team member, but he isn’t too concerned.
“We’ve always hired for talent over over names,” he said. “Hiring was never really a tough thing.”
Since the pandemic, however, Glantz says they have moved away from a percentage-based system of earnings to a more flexible model.
“We’ve chosen to adapt to a new direction where everyone pays the chair fee for their space and that way they can sort of manage their own schedules,” he said. “If people work as much as they want to, they have the ability to control their own income, which can work out exceptionally well for them.”
Interest hikes could slow
Economists say that this rise in overall unemployment casts doubt on future interest rate hikes from the Bank of Canada.
“While one weak labour market report doesn’t make a trend, the [Bank of Canada] will be closely watching to see if other cracks start to form,” James Orlando, senior economist for TD Bank, wrote in an email.
Jay Zhao-Murray, an analyst for Monex Canada, said in a note because of the “details and composition of employment changes, we do not think it would materially change the Bank’s latest view on the economy.”
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But one month of a weakening jobs market may not be enough.
“The Labour Force Survey is notoriously volatile,” Royce Mendes, managing director and head of macro strategy at Desjardins, wrote in an email. “It would need to be corroborated with a host of additional information to change our view that the Bank of Canada will hike again in July.”
“When things will kind of slow down a bit, we’ll be judging through a whole set of measures, trying to figure out whether things happen,” said Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Paul Beaudry in a speech to the Victoria Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. “But we won’t only look at one measure.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
