Jobs increase among Canadian men over 25

Feb 7, 2014 | News

Courtesy Flickr user Stella Blu

Courtesy Flickr user Stella Blu

By Hermione Wilson

Employment is up by 29,000 jobs, says a labour report today. As well, more men 25 and over were employed at the beginning of this year in Canada.

Statistics Canada released the results of their Labour Force Survey  for January 2014 today. Jason Gilmore, chief of current labour analysis at Statistics Canada, says this job increase represents a rise in the number of Canadians who are employed full-time and self-employed.

There hasn’t been much change in job growth since December 2013, said Gilmore. Employment was down 44,000 jobs last month, meaning unemployment in January decreased by a mere 0.2 per cent. “Employment growth is slow,” he said.

Sid Ryan agreed. “The economy is still anemic in terms of creating jobs,” said the president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.  As Ryan pointed out, 29,000 jobs may have been created, but only 6,000 of those jobs are in Ontario. He said that while these jobs are full-time, they may not remain so. “Self-employment tends to be low wage and precarious,” said Ryan.

Apart from an overall increase in jobs, Canadian men enjoyed a higher rate of employment in January 2014. Employment rose by 24,000 among men aged 25 to 54, and by 18,000 for men 55 years and older.

“It could be a combination of the type of work and where they work,” said Gilmore. For example, he said, reported increases in male-dominated industries like transportation and warehousing may have something to do with it.

It’s a positive trend, said Ryan, but he said he was most concerned about youth employment, down 29,000 on a year-over-year basis. “In youth employment numbers are going south,” said Ryan.

“It’s not healthy,” he said of the current state of the Canadian economy, adding that we should have seen an additional 285,000 jobs.

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics  released its own employment survey results today. Since October 2013, U.S. unemployment rates have decreased by 0.6 per cent and there was an increase of 113,000 jobs in non-farm payroll employment.