Jobless rate rises in December

Canada’s latest unemployment numbers are out, and they are not good.

StatsCan says our economy lost 45,900 jobs in December. Economists had expected the economy to add 14,600 jobs. Instead, the unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 per cent from 6.9 per cent in November.

The drop was led by a decline in full-time jobs which fell by roughly 60,000 thousand in December. The loss was offset in part by a gain of 14,200 part-time jobs.

For the whole year, StatsCan reports the slowest job growth since 2009 – 102,000 jobs. 310,000 jobs were created in 2012.

It’s a better situation in the U.S., where the unemployment rate fell to 6.7 per cent.

Here’s how local communities fared (December rate, with November’s rate in brackets):

• Toronto 8.4 (8.2)
• Hamilton 6.7 (6.8)
• St. Catharines-Niagara 8.8 (8.6)
• Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo 6.1 (6.0)
• Brantford 5.1 (4.1)
• Guelph 7.5 (7.4)

Image: Statistics Canada