Halifax’s Labour Force Grew By 6,000 This Past Year, Despite Pandemic
HALIFAX – Despite everything the city has been through in the past calendar year, including a worldwide pandemic, Halifax’s labour force grew by 6,000 people, according to Statistics Canada.
That is an increase of 2.3 per cent between December 2019 and December 2020. Incredibly, the unemployment rate only went up by 0.7 per cent, despite the economic destruction caused by Covid-19 through most of 2020.
Halifax’s labour numbers also saw a jump between November and December of 2020, according to the latest stats. Between those months, the labour force grew by 2,400 people in the city. The unemployment rate during this period also went up by 0.7 per cent, reflecting the change that happened over the course of the last year. With that slight jump, the current unemployment rate sits at 7.3 per cent. There are currently 243,500 employed within the city.
Over the past year, the employment and labour numbers have not been so kind to Nova Scotia as a whole, however. Between December 2019 and December 2020, the province lost 6,700 jobs. Given that Halifax saw an increase in this stat, this suggests rural areas were hit hardest by the pandemic economically. There are currently 458,900 people employed in Nova Scotia, 381,200 of which are employed with full-time jobs. The province’s unemployment rate increased over the past year by 0.7 per cent.
The timespan between November and December 2020 was particularly hard economically for Nova Scotia. Throughout the province, there was a net total loss of 9,600 jobs, 2,000 of which were full time. The province’s unemployment rate also went up by 2.2 per cent, with 11,200 people claiming to be unemployed. The employment dropped by 1.2 per cent during this time as well.