​February unemployment rate increases to 6%, says labour market planning board

In February, the unemployment rate for the Stratford-Bruce Peninsula Economic Region jumped 0.2 percentage points to six per cent, after sitting at one of the lowest in the province for months. Meanwhile, the provincial unemployment rate remained unchanged this month at 7.2 per cent, both unadjusted for seasonality.

That’s the word from the Four County Labour Market Planning Board.

Last month, the region’s overall population increased by 300 although the labour force size decreased by 600 people, pushing the number of people not in the labour force in the region up to 113,500. This decreased the region’s participation rate slightly by 0.2 percentage points to 61.1 per cent.

The region experienced a decrease of 800 people in overall employment, with approximately 1,700 full-time losses and 900 part-time gains.

The number of goods-producing sector employees decreased by 4.7 per cent (-2,900) in February, with the biggest percentage loss once again in the agriculture sector (-1,800, -18.8 per cent) due to seasonality, followed by manufacturing (-900, -4.8 per cent) and construction (-700, -3.2 per cent).

On the other hand, employment in utilities increased by 500 people (+4.6 per cent) in February.

Overall employment in the services-producing sector saw an increase of two per cent (+2,100) last month. Public administration, with 800 additional employment, experienced the biggest percentage gain this month (+22.9 per cent), followed by business, building and other support services (+700, +16.7 per cent) and wholesale and retail trade (+3,000, +13.7 per cent). Finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing also experienced employment gains this month (+500, +8.5 per cent).

Accommodation and food services saw the biggest percentage loss in employment (-900, -10.6 per cent), followed by information, culture and recreation (-400, -5.8 per cent) and professional, scientific and technical services (-700, -5.3 per cent).

Current job postings for the Bruce, Grey, Huron, Perth region have increased over time since the pandemic and can be found at www.connect2JOBS.ca. The current number of job postings reaches 1,370.