Labor market recovers to pre-COVID levels

The Canadian workforce changed a lot in September, with the return to schools, helping more parents, especially “core age” women, to work full time while cutting back on returning students.

For younger people who are not in school, that is, almost a third of all 15-24 year olds in Canada, there are not as many jobs of a certain type available, even when the job market as a whole seems so. made in February 2020.

“The fact that employment has returned to pre-pandemic levels does not mean that labor markets have recovered,” wrote Nathan Janzen, senior economist at RBC, in a note noting that there are still about 200,000 fewer jobs. in the service of greater contact. sectors since the pandemic and that government support is disappearing.

the Statistics Canada data released on Friday it also showed that jobs not requiring postsecondary education were down 287,000 in September from two years earlier.

This is a clear divergence from the general trend, which is that people in most situations and life stages are working at or roughly the same rate as before COVID-19.

For both men and women, the employment rate (the proportion of the population aged 15-24 with employment) was equal to the pre-pandemic rates, echoing a broader meeting of that benchmark, as most of the provinces were reopening face-to-face classrooms for the first time. time in months with varying degrees of public health restrictions and COVID-19 pressure on healthcare.

The increases in employment were concentrated in full-time work, among people in the main working age group 25-54, roughly divided between the public and private sectors, and spread across provinces from Ontario and Quebec to Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The report is a snapshot of mid-September, with the new school year underway across the country, and it showed that about half of the students were employed, similar to September 2019. But the employment rate among non-student youth down 1.5 percentage points compared to two years earlier, eight out of ten held jobs.

By then, the quarantine for travelers to Canada had been lifted and Ontario’s vaccination mandate to access non-essential businesses was looming, but not yet in effect. In most other provinces, similar measures were being implemented and Alberta had reversed its opening to quell a fourth wave of health crises.

In a typical year, going back to school results in increased employment and working hours for fathers after the summer, and this year followed that trend, with the employment rate for middle-aged mothers (whose youngest child was under 13 years old) by 79.4 percent in September at an average of 29.3 hours per week, both with little change from two years earlier.

Meanwhile, elderly parents with young children saw a slight decrease in work and working hours compared to two years ago.

Statistics Canada employment data for September shows that the overall job market looks almost like it was in February 2020. #COVID #Economy #Labour

Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada National Observer

Reference-www.nationalobserver.com

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