Unemployment numbers have leaped locally, as three million people across the country have lost their jobs in two months due to COVID-19.
Greater Victoria’s unemployment rate is 7.2 per cent, B.C.’s is at 11.5 per cent and Canada’s is at 13 per cent as of April, Statistics Canada said in its monthly labour force survey.
The capital region’s unemployment rate had been 3.2 per cent in February, when it was among the lowest in the country, before rising to 4.6 per cent last month.
The job losses are “unprecedented” and “staggering,” B.C.’s Finance Minister Carole James said today. Before the pandemic, the province had an unemployment rate of five per cent, the lowest in Canada.
In the past month alone, the province lost 264,000 jobs. Combine that with the numbers for March, when the virus first affected the economy, and the total comes to 396,500.
“The numbers today in fact aren’t the full picture,” James said. “Because many of those who lost employment are counted as not in the labour force, rather than unemployed. Because they wanted work, but they didn’t look for work because of the lack of opportunities right now because of COVID-19.”
Many businesses throughout the capital region are closed and boarded up, some by choice and others because of provincial health and safety regulations.
Businesses relying on tourism — one of the foundations of Greater Victoria’s economy — have been hard hit now that international travel, including cruise ships, has evaporated.
The number of people employed in the capital region in April slid by 10,200 from March to 187,700, Statistics Canada said.
For the region covering Vancouver Island and the mainland coast, the unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) climbed to 8.4 cent from 3.7 per cent the same time a year ago.
James said all sectors have been affected by the virus, but the worst hit are accommodation and food operations, and wholesale and retail trade.
“In total, 47 per cent of the job losses we saw in March and April combined were in these sectors.”
Since the province’s emergency benefit for unemployed workers was introduced a week ago, more than 400,000 applications have been approved for the one-time $1,000 payment, James said.
B.C. announced this week that it is embarking on a staged re-opening plan. It has set aside $1.5 billion to help the provincial economy recover.
Asked if B.C. is in the midst of the worst of it, James said: “I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, I’m afraid.
“But I think now that we have started our gradual restart on the economy, we will be watching very carefully the months of May and June.”
Once it’s clear what businesses open and who returns to work, she said, “we will have a better sense of what we are looking at.”
“I think we’ve got a hard road ahead. I don’t want to sugar-coat this.”
James said how the $1.5 billion is spent will depend on the “work that needs to happen sector-by-sector and in a broad way across British Columbia.”
Talks will be taking place with tourism officials, she said.
On a national level, more than one in five households say they are having difficulty meeting financial obligations, Statistics Canada said.
Among those who have lost jobs, young people have been disproportionately affected.
From February to April, employment among youth declined by 873,000, or 34.2 per cent, the federal agency said.
Unemployment surged to 31.7 per cent (not seasonally adjusted) for students ages 15 to 24 in April. This is “signalling that many could face difficulties in continuing to pay for their studies.”
Brian DePratto, senior economist for TD Economics, said the country hasn’t seen those kinds of numbers since the Great Depression. “And even then, the speed at which the current episode unfolded seems to have no identifiable precedent.”
DePratto said even more telling than the number of lost jobs is the impact on hours worked.
A total of 2.5 million Canadians worked less than half their usual hours last month as a result of COVID-19, DePratto said.
“One in four is how many either lost their job, or most/all of their hours. The scale of the needed pandemic response has been such that odds are that most of us know at least one, if not several people, who’ve had their lives disrupted as a result.”
