The Canadian job market isn’t exactly weakening. It’s just failing to keep up with the country’s breakneck population growth, according to June employment data from Statistics Canada (Stat Can). Jobs were largely unchanged, but the population of unemployed workers has exploded dramatically. Canada’s unemployment rate is now the highest in years, and even more alarming—nearly a fifth of the country’s 1.4 million seeking employment are now considered “long-term” unemployed.
Canada Didn’t Lose Jobs, But It Added 42k Unemployed Workers
Canadian employment was virtually unchanged last month at 20.5 million people. While the country did not see any significant gains or losses to jobs, it wasn’t enough to deal with the near-record population growth. Consequently, the unemployment rate climbed 0.2 points to 6.4% of workers in June. Unemployment is now a point higher than last year, and the highest rate since January 2022.
Canadian Unemployment Rate Now Higher Than Pre-2020
Source: Statistics Canada.
A rising unemployment rate is already less-than-ideal, but the details are even worse. The unemployed population climbed by 42k people last month, hitting a whopping 1.4 million people. Workers without jobs has reached the same growth rate as the population, but the direction will compound the issue. The growth rate for the unemployed population is accelerating while the general population is slowing down. Without a major shift in the next few weeks, unemployment will soon outpace population growth.
A Fifth Of Canada’s 1.4 Million Unemployed Are Now “Long Term”
Finding a job once unemployed is also becoming much more difficult for Canadians. Nearly 1 in 5 (17.6%) of the 1.4 million unemployed people are now considered long-term unemployed, failing to find work for more than 27-weeks. About 22% of older unemployed workers (aged 55+) were in this category, the highest share of any demographic.
Canada’s Young Adults Face The Worst Job Market Since 2014
Canada’s young adults are carrying the lion’s share of the rising unemployment. Stat Can finally made mention of the youth unemployment rate, which climbed to 13.5% in June. Outside of pandemic, young adults are facing the worst jobs market since 2014.
As recently mentioned, young adults and recent immigrants tend to compete for similar roles—early career gigs to build up work experience. As a result of competition, both groups are now racing to the bottom and experiencing higher-than-average joblessness. The country has yet to address the issue, but it has promised to throttle its aggressive immigration plan in the future.
Not a direct move to address unemployment, but it may lower competition. That is, if policymakers actually execute the promised slowdown. Applications currently indicate there’s been little to no action in this area.
Trudeau’s aggressive immigration plan will haunt us for years. I predict that AI will benefit research in all areas, but it will replace ordinary workers and professional services, excluding medical, by the thousands.
.. and just wait until you add in 4 million students all overstaying their visas with diplomas from worthless institutions, for courses that they didn’t even attend.. that no one will ever employ apart from Uber and Amazon
Yes they are slaves(hostages) brought specifically for this purpose. Bro 😎 they’re the victim not the villain… They were told Canada is paradise so they and their families got into debt to pay the smugglers(fake schools+federal government) ..once they land and get a reality check it will be too late …they can’t go back empty handed to the families they nearly bankrupted …they can’t not continue paying tuition so they suck it up hoping for better times …and as soon as it gets better oligarchy forces it’s will on government and they bring more slaves
Pierre is offering them permanent resident status, so no avoiding this.
But I’m pretty sure those students will come out better than local kids who’ve never had to bargain or hustle for anything.
They need 1-yearlong full-time job to apply for PR.
@Daniel Wong – Regarding this sentence:
“Without a major shift in the next few weeks, unemployment will soon outpace population growth. ”
Do you have a chart of this? What parts of the population does it include? (PR/TFWs/Students/Refugees…) How many weeks are we looking at? I just hope there’s more details to this, because if this is actually the case it would be REALLY important news. This could define a point that fiscal policy for things like buying hotels for refugees, or subsidizing foreign wages thereby devaluing canadian-born wages, etc, would start to see real negative returns on investment for everyone speculating.