BC marked largest increase in employment in Canada in 2015

“Calgary, being the head office or centre for the energy sector, we’ve seen a lot of those professional jobs being shed”, ATB Financial Economist Todd Hirsch said.

Stats Canada says the London-St.

Canada’s economy created 23,000 jobs in December – four times what was expected – although the unemployment rate remained stable at 7.1 percent, the government said Friday.

A closer look at the numbers shows there were 1,400 jobs created in the final month of 2015, while the number of people claiming EI dropped by 1,800. Year-over-year, the picture isn’t quite as bleak; the province added 51,600 jobs in 2015 – but most of these were in part-time work.

The unemployment rate was down from 10 per cent in November.

The agency also says that, in addition to being concentrated nearly entirely in one province, all the new jobs in December were of the self-employed or part-time variety.

Edmonton finished the year with 6.2 per cent unemployment, compared to Calgary’s 7.0 per cent rate.

The value of residential building permits totalled $4 billion in November, a decline of 17.8 per cent from the previous month.

“All told, a nice headline masking a continuing trend for weak hiring by private-sector companies in Canada”, Mr. Shenfeld said. Manufacturing jobs were down 5.3 per cent and construction employment fell 2.7 per cent.

Looking at 2015 as a whole, Canada added over 158,000 jobs and the good news is that most of these-151,000-were full-time positions.

The 2015 employment growth rate was slightly stronger than in 2014 and 2013, when the overall number of jobs expanded by just 0.7 per cent in each of those years.