Unemployment rate falls to record low, down 0.3 per cent in May

By Hana Mae Nassar, Mike Eppel, and the Canadian Press

OTTAWA (NEWS 1130) – It was another good month for Canada’s labour market.

There were 27,000 new jobs added in May. Statistics Canada says this follows a strong increase in employment in April.

“The unemployment rate in May was the lowest since comparable data became available in 1976,” the agency says. Job numbers grew by 453,000 compared with the same month a year ago.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.4 per cent compared with 5.7 per cent in April as the number of people looking for work fell sharply.

Economists on average had expected the addition of 8,000 jobs for the month and an unemployment rate of 5.7 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.

The better-than-expected increase in the number of jobs follows a record 106,500 jobs that were added in April.

The increase in jobs was made up entirely of full-time employment as there was no change in the number of part-time jobs.

Year-over-year average hourly wage growth for all employees, a key indicator monitored by the Bank of Canada ahead of its interest-rate decisions, 2.8 per cent in May, up from 2.5 per cent in April.

Statistics Canada says employment rose in B.C., as well as in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. A drop was seen in Newfoundland and Labrador as well as in Prince Edward Island, while there was little change in the rest of the country.

In B.C., employment rose by 17,000 in May, primarily thanks to increases in “part-time work among core-aged people.”

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