Black and South Asian Canadians saw a larger rise in unemployment in September than the overall Canadian workforce, Statistics Canada said Friday, with women in both populations affected the most.
The unemployment rate for core-aged Canadians between the ages of 25 and 54 was 4.9 per cent in September, up 0.4 per cent year-over-year – but “increases in the unemployment rates of many racialized groups have been larger,” the federal agency said in its monthly Labour Force Survey.
The unemployment rate among core-aged South Asian Canadians was 6.4 per cent in September, rising 1.4 per cent from a year earlier.
That increase was driven by unemployment among South Asian women, Statistics Canada noted, with that demographic seeing unemployment rise 2.1 percentage points to 8.2 percent since a year earlier.
Black Canadians’ unemployment rate rose by 1.1 percentage points in September from the previous year to reach 7.9 per cent.
Black women also drove that increase, Statistics Canada said, with their unemployment rate rising 2.5 percentage points to 9.4 per cent.
Chinese Canadians also saw a higher rate of unemployment at 5.4 per cent, though that figure represented little change from a year earlier, Statistics Canada said. Chinese women had a higher rate of unemployment at 6.2 per cent, while the unemployment rate for Chinese men was 4.5 per cent.
