Canada lost 17,000 jobs in May, pushing the unemployment rate up to 5.2 per cent, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
The decline is primarily driven by a 77,000 loss in jobs among youth aged 15 to 24. Meanwhile, employment increased by 63,000 among people aged 25 to 54. Men in this age range represented
two-thirds of this growth, gaining 43,000 jobs.
Statistics Canada says the overall employment rate was "virtually unchanged," with only a 0.1 per cent decrease in May. This is the first time since August 2022 that Canada has lost jobs; 326,000 jobs
were gained between September 2022 to January 2023.
Average wages rose to $33.25 — a 5.1 per cent year-over-year increase. While the inflation numbers for May have not yet been released, this marks the fourth month in a row when the year-over-year
wage increase is on track to outpace inflation, which was 4.4 per cent in April.
Statistics Canada reports that the industries that lost the most jobs in May were business, building and other support services, which lost 31,000 jobs, equivalent to a 4.4 per cent decline overall.
There were also 40,000 fewer self-employed workers, according to the report.
Youth can't find work
Shaziah Jinnah Morsette, president of the University of Calgary Students' Union, has been seeing students at her university struggle to find employment first hand. She says one in five students it
recently surveyed have been able to find full-time work this summer.
"Often, this isn't just summer full-time work that they want; it's summer full-time work that they need," said Jinnah Morsette, whose union represents over 28,000 undergraduate students. "That
cost-of-living crunch, that affordability crunch is being really felt by post-secondary students, and has been for years."
Jinnah Morsette says, in order to make ends meet, students will often settle for jobs that don't develop skills relevant to their field of study or the careers they're pursuing.
Dawn Desjardins, chief economist at Deloitte, says this is not uncommon.
"You do get those first jobs where you're really learning skills that you don't necessarily have from your education," she said. "So yes, I think there's a mismatch in a lot of ways across the economy in
the labour market."
However, Desjardins believes that the reality is not as "deep and dark" as it first appears, and should not be an immediate cause for concern.
"We see a lot of volatility in these numbers," she said.
