Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, lost 355,300 jobs in 2020, pushing the unemployment rate to 9.6 percent, its highest since 1993, the province’s Financial Accountability Office reported last week.
The sheer number of jobs lost was the largest in Ontario’s history.
“The rise in the unemployment rate in 2020 was tempered by a surge in individuals who left the labor force and as a result were not counted as unemployed,” the report noted.
“Due to these exits, the province’s labor force participation rate dropped to 63.6 per cent, down sharply from 64.9 per cent in 2019 and the lowest rate on record,” it said.
The number of hours worked by those who still had jobs also fell, the agency found.
Service-sector jobs disappeared more quickly than those in manufacturing. About 27 percent of low-wage jobs vanished, while only 1.4 percent of jobs in higher-wage categories disappeared.
“More than half of the total job losses in Ontario were concentrated in industries facing significant pandemic-related restrictions, including accommodation and food services, retail trade, and transportation and warehousing,” the report said.
Young workers were also particularly affected by the pandemic, accounting for about four in 10 jobs lost in the province.
About 40 percent of jobs that disappeared were among workers in the ages of 15 and 24. Their employment rate plunged to a 20-year low as unemployment for the group soared to a record 22 percent.
Women lost more jobs than men, shedding 202,600 spots to men’s 152,600.
About 20 percent of mothers ages 25 to 54 “with children under the age of 18 were absent from work,” the report states, “more than twice the share of absence among fathers.”
The Ontario cities of Peterborough and Windsor saw the greatest loss of jobs; Barrie and London managed slight gains.
TRENDPOST: We note this data as a reference to what is transpiring across much of the globe as a result of politicians shutting down economies and launching the COVID War. We maintain our forecast that the “Greatest Depression” has begun. The economic damage that has been wrought on hundreds of millions of lives and livelihoods around the world will not be salvaged when economies begin to open up.
