Article content
The unemployment rate in the Windsor area dropped .1 per cent in October, but the region’s 8.8 per cent rate was the highest in Canada in the October Labour Force Survey released Friday by Statistics Canada.
The national and Ontario unemployment rates remained unchanged at 6.5 and 6.8 per cent respectively.
“Our economy actually did pretty well last month,” said Workforce Windsor CEO Justin Falconer.
Advertisement 2
Article content
“We reduced the number of unemployed by 300. It’s the third month in a row we’ve reduced the number of unemployed in the area even as we absorbed more population last month.
“Even though we lost 1,800 people from our labour force, there was only a net job loss of 200 so it’s likely it was a lot of retirements.”
Last month the number of unemployed was 18,600, which is down from this year’s peak of 19,500 that occurred over the summer.
Falconer said it was also encouraging that the manufacturing sector is picking up momentum.
“The manufacturing sector had the most jobs gains in October,” Falconer said. “Employment in the sector was up 1,500 (to 36,400 jobs).
“That’s an increase of nearly 4,000 from October 2023. It’s our best October in two years in manufacturing.”
Falconer added with the NextStar Energy battery plant beginning module production in late October, there’s potential for steady growth in the sector over the next 12 months.
Other sectors enjoying big job growth were education (plus-700) and transportation/warehousing (plus-600).
“The construction sector didn’t add any new jobs, but it stayed at as high a level as I can recall for the third straight month,” Falconer said.
Advertisement 3
Article content
“It was very strong with 14,000 jobs compared to 9,200 jobs last October. It’s been helped by the good weather this fall.”
The sectors that experienced the biggest job losses were healthcare/social assistance (1,300) and food service/accommodation (1,200).
Despite the Windsor census metropolitan area’s persistent high unemployment rate, the region continues to attract new residents.
The Windsor CMA, which also includes Lakeshore, LaSalle, Tecumseh and Amherstburg, saw the population grow by 1,200 people. Those communities have added 14,300 more people since October 2023.
“We continued to absorb new population and our unemployment rate actually dropped,” Falconer said. “This is the lowest number of unemployed people in the area since May.
“Some of these numbers (unemployment rate) are actually camouflaging what’s happening.”
The high unemployment rate comes at a time when the number of people working is also increasing. Though there was a drop of 200 employed people in October (193,600), that’s still 8,300 more than were employed in October 2023.
Advertisement 4
Article content
The size of the local labour force shrunk by 700 workers to 212,100 last month, but is still up 12,600 people over the past 12 months. That’s a 6.3 per cent increase, which outpaces the 4.3 per cent population growth by nearly two percentage points.
“I think that’s the result of the pressure from the cost of living,” said Falconer of why the labour force is increasing faster than population growth. “The second person in the household is taking on a part-time or second job.
“There were 40,000 people working part-time jobs in October compared to 38,500 in September.”
Twitter.com/winstarwaddell
Article content
