Employment numbers in November were promising -- if you're male.
Figures released Friday by Statistics Canada show women have been hit considerably harder than men in this economic crisis, largely because their employment is more concentrated in service-industry areas that have been directly affected by the pandemic.
The number of jobs nationwide grew by 62,000 in November, the agency reported, triple the number experts had expected and giving hope that the second wave of COVID-19 restrictions will do less damage to the economy than the first one.
Canada’s jobless rate dropped to 8.5% in November, with almost all job growth concentrated in full-time work, StatCan said. That’s down from a peak of 13.7% in May.
Among visible minorities, the unemployment rate fell to 10.2% in November, from 11.7% a month earlier. Among non-visible minority, non-Indigenous Canadians, the jobless rate was 6.9%, up 0.2 percentage points from October.
In April, there were 5.5 million Canadians who had lost work or had hours cut due to the pandemic; by November, that number was down to one million.
But with new restrictions on activity biting into the holiday shopping season, many economists predict the trend will reverse itself in December, and Canada will start seeing net job losses again.
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