On the face of it, the capital region’s economy looks to be coping reasonably well despite the hammer blows of COVID-19.
Its jobless rate tumbled to 8.6 per cent in September from 9.2 per cent in August, according to estimates published Friday by Statistics Canada. That reflected a combination of 9,100 net new jobs — the vast majority added on the Ottawa side of the river — and a slightly bigger labour force, which includes people looking for work.
This makes Ottawa-Gatineau the only urban area among the country’s six largest to report a single-digit jobless rate. The others ranged from 10.7 per cent in Montreal to 12.8 per cent in Toronto (seasonally adjusted, using a three-month average).
On the other hand, the capital region has recouped a relatively small portion of the jobs lost due to COVID-19. Total employment in September was 730,200. While that’s up 34,200 from the bottom reported in June, we’re still nearly 46,000 jobs short of a full recovery. That’s six per cent below where we were in February.
Among the big cities our recovery rate is about the same as Edmonton and Vancouver — 43 per cent — but short of that recorded by Toronto (54 per cent of jobs recovered), Montreal (74 per cent) and Calgary (78 per cent).
A look at the capital region’s job market in more detail reveals huge disparity by sector.
Several industries employed more in September than they did in February, prior to the initial economic lockdown.
Manufacturing, which includes high-tech, is up 22 per cent (a net gain of 4,100 jobs since February). So are business services (up 5,500 jobs). Also reporting higher employment levels are employers in health care (a gain of 10,400, representing a 12 per cent rise) and transportation & warehousing (up 2,700 or 10 per cent).
Other sectors are still hurting badly. Chief among them is hotels & restaurants, where employment levels are down 26 per cent from February (12,000 jobs lost).
Education services, which include private-sector trainers, remains 12,400 jobs short of where it was (down 19 per cent) while professional services (a drop of 13 per cent or 9,400 jobs) and wholesale & retail trade (down 8,400 jobs of 9 per cent) are also short of full recovery.
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