Job Losses Continue To Mount Across Canada

Last week, it was reported that Toronto was experiencing an increase in its unemployment rate as of late. Sadly, statistics show that the city's current rate is the highest it has been in fifteen years.

Unfortunately, it would appear as if the rest of the country is following this exact trend. As reported today by Peter Zimonjic and Christina Spencer of the National Bureau, “the number of jobs losses in Canada continues to soar with another 45,000 disappearing last month.”

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty warns that further job losses for Canadians are imminent. This, of course, refutes any idea of the recession being “over” as was declared by The Bank of Canada just a couple of weeks ago. This declaration, not surprisingly, was met with extreme skepticism and anger by Canadians who had lost their jobs due to the struggling economy.

If the recession was over, said many online readers of the supposedly good news, their employment statuses would have naturally been restored. “The unemployment rate will lag the recovery of the economy,” says Flaherty in a statement most would consider quite obvious.

According to Zimonjic and Spencer, citizens of Quebec are suffering the most severe losses of employment as the province “dumped 37,000 jobs in July.”

Similar to the job losses in Toronto, the construction industry throughout the nation has suffered greatly. Also like in Toronto, students across Canada, who depend on summer jobs to help pay their ways through school, have been hit hard.

The unemployment rate for students is at 20.9% – the highest it has been since 1977 when Statistics Canada started keeping such records. NDP Leader Jack Layton weighed in on this revelation: “Seeing such a high rate of unemployment among the youth is really worrying because the young people were counting on these (jobs) for their education…They're going to be very discouraged.”

Evidently, the unemployment rate is one of the most damaging effects of the recession. Until a significant number of these lost jobs are restored, most Canadians will not feel as if its nation has successfully bounced back from the economic crisis being felt across the globe. It appears, at this time, that such a resurgence is a long way off.