Canada Unemployment Rate

The unemployment rate in Canada was at 6.5% in October of 2024, remaining unchanged from the previous month and slightly below market expectations that it would have bounced back to the near 3-year high of 6.6% from August. The result further alleviated concerns that the Canadian economy would not be able to halt the marked softening in the labor market undergone in the second half of the year. The unemployed population rose by 900 people to 1,429,000. In turn, net employment rose by 14,500 to 20,596,900 but missed market expectations that it would rise by 25,000. Joblessness fell sharply for the youth (-20,800 to 403,400), offsetting a sharper increase in the core aged population (21,300 to 803,900), while that for the older population was loosely unchanged. In the meantime, the labor force participation rate eased by 0.1 percentage points from the previous month to 64.8%, the lowest since January 2021.