Sudbury loses another 1,400 jobs – The Sudbury Star

Sudbury’s COVID-infected economy continues to shed jobs.

Statistics Canada said on Friday that the Sudbury area lost 1,400 jobs June and its unemployment rate moved up to 9.4 per cent, compared to 8.4 per cent in May.

The agency said Sudbury recorded 76,000 jobs in May, but that fell to 74,600 jobs last month.

In addition, the area’s labour force shrank: 83,000 people were either employed or were looking for work in May. That number fell to 82,200 in June.

Greater Sudbury lost 3,400 jobs in May and more than 10,000 since February, Statistics Canada figures also show.

And while the city’s biggest employers, such as Vale, Glencore and Health Sciences North, have continued to operate, the services sector has been hit hard after the economy was locked down in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The province has begun to lift some of those restrictions, but the job market — at least in Sudbury — has yet to bounce back.

Not so nationally: Canada added a record 952,900 jobs in June on a service sector surge as restaurants, stores and businesses reopened from coronavirus closures, although its jobless rate was slightly worse than expected at 12.3 per cent.

Statistics Canada said on Friday that the country has regained some 1.2 million of the 3 million jobs lost from February to April as non-essential businesses across the country were shut to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

Analysts in a Reuters poll had predicted a gain of 700,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 12 per cent.

“It’s a pleasant high-side surprise. It’s a big step in the right direction,” Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, said of the jobs gain.

Still, just over a quarter of the potential labor force was underutilized in June, notably higher than prepandemic levels, StatsCan said.

The Canadian dollar was nearly unchanged at 1.3589 per U.S. dollar, or 73.59 U.S. cents.

The U.S. last week also posted record job gains in June on its reopenings but a COVID-19 resurgence could lead to a labor market setback in July.

Employment in Canada’s goods-producing sector rose by 158,600, while the services sector gained a record 794,400 positions, split fairly evenly between full-time and part-time.

Economists did not expect the record job gain to prompt action from the Bank of Canada, which slashed its key interest rate three times in March to 0.25 per cent.

“They will still be cautious about the aftermath of the initial V stage (of the recovery). This is reflecting a quick spurt as economies reopen,” Derek Holt, head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank, said.

The June totals did not capture people who temporarily lost work due to the coronavirus crisis and want to work, but are not currently looking for employment, Statscan said. Had they been counted, the unemployment rate would have been 16.3 per cent.

Despite the good news, economist Jim Stanford said there remains a historic crisis in the job market with high unemployment and hundreds of thousands who have left the labour force altogether.

Also, gains nationally were not shared equally among groups, with women, youth and low-wage workers still slower to rebound, which Stanford said could be problematic if those jobs don’t ever come back.

“I worry about a coming second round of layoffs motivated not by health restrictions, but by companies deciding their businesses are going to be permanently smaller. So that would be qualitatively different and in a way worse,” said Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work in Vancouver.

“We aren’t remotely out of the woods yet, but this was a really encouraging step forward.”

Some three million jobs were lost over March and April due to the pandemic, and 2.5 million more had their hours and earnings slashed. By last month, some 3.1 million were affected by the pandemic, including 1.4 million who weren’t at work due to COVID-19.

Brendon Bernard, an economist at Indeed Canada, said recapturing jobs at the same pace in the coming months will be tougher.

“A lot of areas of the economy still aren’t running at full capacity,” Bernard said. “So while doors may be open and customers might be coming in, business hasn’t come back to normal.”

The overall job losses were unprecedented in speed and depth compared with previous recessions, Statistics Canada said, and the rebound to date sharper than previous downturns.

Ottawa’s response has been equally unprecedented: a deficit of at least $343.2 billion this fiscal year as the Trudeau Liberals dole out some $230 billion in emergency aid.

In June, 28.3 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 69 reported receiving some form of federal aid since mid-March, Statistics Canada said. Meanwhile, the proportion of households reporting difficulty paying the bills dropped to 20.1 per cent in June from 22.5 per cent in May.

“Without the federal government being there to support Canadian workers, Canadian businesses and the Canadian provinces and territories, we would be in a bigger mess in this country right now,” Hassan Yussuff, president of the Canadian Labour Congress said in an interview this week.

The Bank of Canada and federal government believe the worst of the economic pain from the pandemic is behind the country, but Canada will face high unemployment and low growth until 2021.

— with files from Canadian Press

sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @SudburyStar