New Brunswick’s economy continues to rebound following the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Statistics Canada.
Its latest labour force survey released Friday shows employment increased by 22,200 in June, pushing the unemployment rate down to 9.9 per cent.
“Combined with May gains, this brought employment in the province to 97.1% of its pre-COVID February level, the most complete employment recovery of all provinces to date,” said the survey.
According to StatsCan, much of New Brunswick’s employment gains — about 13,500 jobs — were in full-time employment, while the remaining 8,700 were part-time.
Meanwhile, employment across the country as a whole increased by 953,000 in June, with gains split between full-time work and part-time employment.
The national unemployment rate fell to 12.3 per cent from its record-high of 13.7 per cent in May.
“With the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in May and June, the initial recovery of employment — to within 9.2% of pre-COVID levels — has been sharper than in previous downturns, when recovery to pre-downturn employment has taken from two to five years,” said StatsCan.
As #COVID19 restrictions continue to ease, what is the state of the Canadian #LabourMarket? In June, the number of workers affected by the #COVID19 economic shutdown was 3.1 million—a 43% reduction since April. https://t.co/9xPOvtUDL3 #CdnEcon pic.twitter.com/mxgdACO5rJ
— Statistics Canada (@StatCan_eng) July 10, 2020
