2023-11-03 12:36:41
The unemployment rate at 4.9% in Quebec
Quebec lost 22,100 jobs in October and the unemployment rate rose 0.5 percentage points to 4.9%. “The unemployment rate shows its strongest increase since January 2022 and almost reaches the 2019 level,” underlines Desjardins economist Florence Jean-Jacobs. Quebec gives way to Saskatchewan for the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Job losses are mainly found in the private sector and in full-time work. Wages have increased less quickly and the number of hours worked is decreasing, which indicates a reduction in tension in the labor market, notes the senior economist at Desjardins.
In the Montreal census metropolitan area, the unemployment rate increased by 1.0 percentage point, and stood at 6.0% in October.
Employment is slowing across the country
The Canadian economy added 18,000 jobs in October, which was lower than economists expected. The unemployment rate rose from 5.5% to 5.7%. The jobs created are mainly part-time and in the public sector.
There were 1.2 million people unemployed in October, up 16.2% since April.
Among those who were unemployed in September, 60.1% remained unemployed in October – a higher proportion than that recorded 12 months earlier (55.4%) and an indication that job seekers are having more difficulty finding employment. find work than a year ago, according to Statistics Canada.
The unemployment rate at 6.5%?
Since the start of the year, the Canadian economy has added an average of 28,000 jobs per month, while the working age population has increased by 81,000 per month, calculated Sébastien Lavoie, chief economist of the Laurentian Bank. . This disproportion leads to a predictable increase in the unemployment rate, which might reach 6.5% by the middle of next year, according to him.
“While the population continues to grow at a breakneck pace, hiring is simply not keeping up,” also note the economists at the National Bank. According to Matthieu Arseneau and Alexandra Ducharme, with the impact of interest rate increases still being felt, “the job market faces a road strewn with pitfalls”.
Calm on the inflation front
In addition to slowing job creation, wage inflation is showing signs of easing. The increase in hourly wages monitored by the Bank of Canada was 5% in October, compared to 5.3% the previous month.
In Quebec, the variation in wages went from 4.2% in September to 4% in October.
This is still too much for the Bank of Canada, which wants to bring inflation to 2%, but as the job market deteriorates, wages will decelerate and so will inflation, predicts Andrew Graham, economist at CIBC. Like many others, CIBC predicts that the Bank of Canada will be able to begin reducing its key rate in the second quarter of 2024.
Less difficult in Quebec
The rise in the cost of living is increasingly felt in the country. Statistics Canada estimates that one in three Canadians live in a household that finds it difficult or very difficult to meet their housing, transportation and food needs.
It is in southern Ontario that these difficulties are most present. In Toronto, nearly 40% of households say they are experiencing financial difficulties, while this proportion is less than 30% in Montreal. Three Quebec cities, Montreal, Gatineau and Quebec, are those where households say they are least affected among the twenty main Canadian metropolitan regions.
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