The national unemployment rate hit a record low in March, but the number continues to be irregularly high in the Central Okanagan.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that the Kelowna metropolitan area had an unemployment rate of 6.7% in March, which was down four-tenths of a percentage point from February but still high above the region’s usual mark of approximately 4.5%. Kelowna’s unemployment rate was 7.1% in both January and February.
The most populated region in the Okanagan usually has one of the country’s lowest unemployment rates, but in March it was No. 29 on the list of 37 metropolitan centres.
Despite the high rate, Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission manager Krista Mallory believes it is too early to draw conclusions.
“What we’re hearing from employers is the demand for labor remains strong,” Mallory said Friday. “Job postings grew 42.5 percent in the region last year compared to 2020. So we’re not hearing of any slowdown in the demand for labor from employers anecdotally.”
Mallory pointed out that Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey advises organizations like the COEDC to look at nothing less than 12 months worth of data. The survey analyzes approximately 200 households and follows them for about six months, rotating new ones in and old ones out every month.
In other words, Mallory said the data could still be an anomaly. The COEDC in two weeks will release its own quarterly report from a job data company that she believes will be a better indicator of where the Central Okanagan job landscape actually stands.
“What we’re hearing from our employers is that they’re continuing to create jobs and are looking for workers—some sectors more than more than others,” Mallory says. “But we’re not hearing from any sector that there’s been any sort of slowdown in that demand for workers.”
The unemployment rate in the Thompson Okanagan increased to 6.2% in March, up from 5.9% in February.
Canada’s unemployment rate registered at 5.3% in March, down from the 5.5% recorded one month earlier as the economy added 72,500 jobs. Statistics Canada said it was the lowest jobless rate since comparable data became available in 1976 and down from the previous low of 5.4% in May 2019. It was also a turnaround from the early days of the pandemic in May 2020 when the unemployment rate hit a record 13.4%.
CIBC senior economist Andrew Grantham said oil-producing provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan were not at full employment before the pandemic struck and may have space for more job gains that could yet drive down the jobless rate.
“There is scope maybe for the unemployment rate to grind a little bit lower,” he said. “That means that there’s a little bit of scope for employment growth to continue to outpace population growth, but just not to the same extent that it has recently.”
Driving the unemployment rate down last month were gains in a variety of sectors. Key to the gains were 24,500 women over age 55 finding work and 35,300 core-aged men between 25 and 54 taking jobs, primarily part-time.
The tightening of the labour market meant average hourly wages were up to 3.4% year over year in March compared with a year-over-year gain of 3.1% in February. The rate lagged the annual pace of inflation in February, which RSM Canada economist Tu Nguyen said is on track to reach its highest point since the early 1980s.
“We are in an overheated economy that is nearing full employment,” she said, suggesting wages may yet rise higher.
— with files from The Canadian Press
