The increasing cases of Omicron compelled businesses to shut down last month. As a result, around 200,000 jobs were disrupted. It resulted in an upsurge in the unemployment rate which shot up to 6.5%.
Statistics Canada conducted a survey for the Labour Force of maple country. They included the data for the week of 9th to 15th January. The new measures in place implemented limited capacity in stores, restaurants were closed, and even concert halls, pubs, gyms etc., were shut off. Many learning institutions switched to online teaching.
Ontario and Quebec were two of the regions that witnessed a significant decline in the employment rate. The hospitality and food industry suffered the hardest during January. Age groups from 15 to 24 and 25 to 54 (women) had faced the struggle as compared to other demographics. For visible minorities (core-aged people), the employment rate went from -1.6 percentage points to 79.8%. For those who do not fall under the visible minorities category and are from a core-aged group, it went from -1.5 percentage points to 84.6%. The data is not seasonally adjusted.
As per a survey, the employment rate stood at 6% in December 2021. The increase happened almost after a nine-month duration. The sudden increase happened because of a lot of temp layoffs, and some were supposed to start their work during this period. The number of folks looking for a job also witnessed a change.
“There are numerous factors driving the larger than expected decline in Canadian jobs, including the closure of in-person schooling, indoor dining and recreation in some provinces,” said Jim Mitchell, president of LHH Canada, in a communication shared to the local news agency, “With one of the largest recorded unemployment rates since April 2021, we are seeing a dip in both full-time and part-time employment, yet it remains unclear whether these drops are correlated with January related seasonal cuts and voluntary resignations.”
RBC senior economist Nathan Janzen added that the Omicron variant put a huge dent in the finance sector, and nobody had expected that it would do this worse. However, this should not be the case in the long run as every region is providing relaxation in measures.
“Although the January labour market data looks exceptionally bad, we expect the recovery to start in February with virus spread and containment measures already easing in parts of the country (including Ontario and Quebec),” Janzen stated.
