COVID-19 and Employment Effects Across Canadian CMAs (Check out Barrie!)

The April 2020 labour force numbers are out from Statistics Canada and the numbers are indeed grim.   Employment dropped by one million in March, and fell by nearly two million in April, bringing the total employment decline since the beginning of the COVID-19 economic shutdown to over three million.  In addition, the number of people who were employed but worked less than half of their usual hours for reasons related to COVID-19 increased by 2.5 million from February to April.

Statistics Canada noted - and this was picked by by the media - that the size  of the decline in employment since February (-15.7%) far exceeds declines observed in the 1981-1982 recession which resulted in a total employment decline of 612,000 (-5.4%) over approximately 17 months.  However, the national unemployment rate in April 2020 is what the unemployment was like at the peak of the 1981-82 recession - at 13 percent.  Employment and the labour force have grown substantially over the last 40 years making such comparisons of absolute numbers problematic.  Nevertheless, the increase in unemployment rates and the percentage declines in employment are dramatic given that declines in previous recession were spread out over months while this one has happened in 30 days.

A comparison across CMAs is quite interesting.  All of Canada's 35 CMAs saw an increase in their unemployment rates (3 month moving average) with the highest unemployment rates currently in Saguenay(13.1 percent), Windsor and Calgary.  The lowest are in Victoria, Ottawa, and Abbostford-Mission (6.2 percent).  Thunder Bay clocks in the middle of all this at  9.2 percent with Sudbury much lower at 8.9 percent.


As for employment declines in percentage terms, everyone saw their total employment decline relative to April 2019 - except for Barrie of all places.  Even with the March to April drop of 6400 jobs,  Barrie has been growing so robustly that its April 2020 total employment is still 5 percent higher than April 2019.  However, the employment drops are quite steep especially for Peterborough and Windsor which saw their employment drop 17.7 and 15.8 percent respectively.  Relatively unscathed - along with Barrie - are London, the Ontario portion of Ottawa-Gatineau, Trois Rivieres and Moncton. Thunder Bay is again close to the middle in terms of employment declines at -6.3 percent while Sudbury was -8.9 percent.


So, there you have it.  The numbers will probably get worse before they get better.  The numbers for May - which will come out in June - will probably show an increase in the unemployment rate as well as a further decline in employment.  However, the additional declines should be substantially less.  One can start to expect to see improvements in the employment numbers in June which will be reflected in July's release.