Canada Sheds Over 1 Million Jobs in March, Smashing Previous Record

Employment in Canada plunged in March by a record amount, wiping away years of job creation in a single month and underlining the economic pain the pandemic has swiftly delivered in North America.
The Canadian economy shed 1.01 million jobs in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, Statistics Canada said Thursday in its closely watched labor-force survey. The consensus was for employment to plummet by 500,000, according to TD Securities. The March result easily smashed the previous record for a one-month job loss in January 2009, or at the height of the global recession, when the economy lost 125,000 positions.
Canada’s unemployment rate shot upward to 7.8%, a gain of 2.2 percentage points from the previous months. For 18 consecutive months, the jobless rate in Canada remained below 6%.