Halifax Unemployment Rate Continues To Fall
HALIFAX – The new year brought a brightening job market to Halifax, as the number of people looking for work in the city began to drop.
According to Statistics Canada, the city’s unemployment rate fell to 6.4 per cent in January, down from 6.6 per cent in December.
That small dip in unemployment is a bright spot for a city that has seen several labour force indicators trend in troubling directions in recent months.
In January of 2019, a scant 5.1 per cent of people looking for work in the city couldn’t find any. But unemployment has crept steadily up over the last 12 months, topping out in December at 6.6 per cent.
That 1.5 percentage point increase is mirrored by a labour force that has been shrinking for close to half a year.
In August of 2019, 262,900 people in Halifax were working or looking for work. By last month, that number had dropped by more than 7,000, to 255,700.
Because the total working-age population in the city has gone up in the past 12 months, the smaller labour force means many have simply given up looking for work altogether.
Most of those lost jobs appear to come from the services-producing sector, with industries like education services and food and accommodation services both losing steam.
Meanwhile, goods-producing industries like forestry, construction, and manufacturing added jobs over the past 12 months.
Unemployment rate falls across N.S.
Nova Scotia’s overall unemployment rate dipped to 7.4 per cent in January, down from 7.9 per cent in December.
Unemployment in Nova Scotia has been falling since October of last year, when the number of people searching for work spiked to 8.2 per cent. However, last month’s rate is still higher than it was in January of 2019, when it sat at 6.7 per cent.
Last month’s dropping jobless rate comes mostly thanks to part-time positions, which made up 2,000 of the 2,300 jobs that were created in the province over the course of the month.
This tracks with Statistics Canada data that shows construction and food service (two industries where part-time work is more common) were the main drivers of new jobs in Nova Scotia last month.
Of the 467,300 people working in the province in January, 85,000 were part-time employees.
Nationally, the unemployment fell 0.1 percentage points, to 5.5 per cent in January. This after 34,500 jobs were created across the country.
Manufacturing, construction, and agriculture were responsible for the majority of those new jobs, while the number of people working in healthcare and social assistance fell substantially.