Labour Force Survey August 2024: Unemployment rate accelerates in lackluster job market.

The labour market is trending down, despite the growth in employment from July. We simply cannot employ enough workers to meet the demand from job seekers. The unemployment rate rising this fast in one month will catch the eye of the Bank of Canada, and it doesn’t leave me too optimistic about the next few months. This will put added pressure on the Bank to potentially open that door to a larger rate cut.

• Andrew DiCapua, Senior Economist, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• In August, the Canadian labour market saw a modest rebound, adding 22K jobs, slightly below expectations of +25K. This marks the first increase in three months as part-time job gains (+66K) offset full-time job losses (-44K).
• The unemployment rate rose 0.2% in August to 6.6% as the economy fails to find jobs for a growing labour force, its highest since May 2017. We’re moving closer to the reality that the unemployment rate will reach 7% by the end of the year.
• Youth employment (ages 15-24) was flat in August with the unemployment rate for youth reaching 14.5%, the highest since May 2021 in the pandemic.
• By sector, job gains were in educational services (+27K), health care (+25K), and wholesale and retail trade (+14K). The declines were concentrated in the services sector, with the largest impacts in other services (-19K), professional services (-16K), and accommodation and food services (-10K).
• Quebec led the month in employment gains, adding 14.7K jobs in August, followed by Alberta (+12.8K). Declines on the month were led by Ontario, with job losses of 8.4K, followed by British Columbia (-4.3K).
• Total hours worked declined 0.1% and were up 1.4% from a year earlier.
• Average hourly wage growth increased 5% on a year-over-year basis following July’s growth of 5.2%.

SUMMARY TABLES AND CHARTS