B.C.’s March unemployment rate hit 6.7%, highest since pandemic: report | CBC News
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B.C. lost 19,000 jobs in March, data shows, pushing the unemployment rate up to 6.7 per cent — the highest rate in about a decade, outside of the first couple years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It marks a jump from 6.1 per cent in February, which saw a similar loss of jobs with youth bearing the brunt of it, according to Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey.
The report shows that the unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 in B.C. rose to 17.1 per cent in March, up from 14.4 per cent the month before.
Douglas Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal, says B.C. registers as “by far the weakest in the country over the past year.”
As young Canadians continue to face a tough job market, some community organizations are stepping up to help them get their foot in the door. CBC’s Pinki Wong was at an event held by the City of Richmond to help youth get there.
The biggest losses were in retail and wholesale trade, with nearly 10,000 jobs lost there, along with declines in finance and real estate, and professional and technical services.
In a statement, B.C. Jobs Minister Ravi Kahlon said the results reflect broader global pressures, pointing to tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump and the war in Iran.
“Despite overall losses last month as we see the impacts of Trump’s tariffs hitting B.C., today’s Labour Force Survey shows that B.C.’s economy is showing signs of strength in a number of key sectors,” he said.
In B.C., the manufacturing sector added 3,700 more jobs in March than in February while the construction sector gained 2,800 jobs.
“Since 2017, B.C. has led all large provinces in GDP growth, has the country’s highest per-capita growth in capital investment, and the highest wage growth,” Kahlon said.
“As we move toward summer, we’re expecting to see more construction jobs created in the coming months.”
At the city level, unemployment rates in parts of the province showed mixed movement. Vancouver’s rate held steady at 6.2 per cent, while Kelowna’s rose to seven per cent from 6.3 per cent the month before.
Chilliwack saw improvement, with unemployment falling to six per cent from 7.2 per cent.
Nationally, Canada’s economy added a modest 14,000 jobs last month, after the data agency’s previous Labour Force Survey from February showed a loss of 84,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.7 per cent, the same as B.C.’s.
StatsCan said there was little variation in employment across age demographics, full- and part-time work and the private and public sectors in March.
“The bleeding stopped after two consecutive monthly employment declines, but March’s data continue the trend of soft labour market performance to start this year,” said economist Marc Desormeaux, vice-president of policy at the Business Council of Canada.
Growth was led by a category the agency calls “other services,” which includes repair and maintenance work in the economy.
Given the earlier losses, “no one is going to mistake this small back-up as a sign of strength,” wrote Porter in a note Friday.
The manufacturing sector remains hard-hit by tariffs, Desormeaux noted, shedding 44,000 positions compared with March a year earlier when the United States first imposed tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and autos.
Average hourly wages across the country, meanwhile, rose 4.7 per cent year-over-year — a jump from 3.9 per cent in February and the fastest pace since October 2024.
StatsCan said some of the recent increase in wages is due to the “composition of employment,” meaning the economy isn’t adding or maintaining as many lower-paying jobs that typically pull down the wage growth average.
Friday’s data marks the Bank of Canada’s last look at the labour market before its next interest rate decision on April 29.