Will the prospect of an imminent return to several workplaces at the start of the school year have an influence on the labor market? One thing is certain, employment growth continues with deconfinement.
As Canadian provinces ease public health restrictions and bars, restaurants, businesses and performance venues can accommodate more people across the country, the service sector accounted for all of the growth in the country. employment in the past month, with 93,000 more jobs in total.
It is mainly young people aged 15 to 24 (+ 62,000 jobs) and working women aged 25 to 54 (+ 30,000 jobs) who have benefited from this increase. Unemployment, for its part, is down, falling 0.3 points to 7.5% in July in Canada. In Quebec, it fell 0.2% and now stands at 6.1%.
The private sector is on the rise
It is also observed that it is the private sector that is at the origin of the employment growth, while the number of employees has increased by 123,000, mainly in accommodation and food services, which , alone, have gained 35,000 jobs.
In contrast, the public sector saw a decline of 31,000 employees in July. This is the first drop in this job category since April 2020, and nearly half of the drop (15,000) occurred in Quebec. According to Statistics Canada, this decline can be explained in part by a drop in the number of employees in education services that is more marked than usual.
Employment increased in Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, but Ontario saw the strongest employment growth for July.
Despite this gradual recovery of the labor market, it still remains below 1.23% of its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.
Telecommuting at a lower level
The July 2021 Labor Force Survey also reports on the situation of people working from home. We can see that teleworking is at its lowest level since October 2020. In fact, the proportion of homeworkers has decreased by 2 points, to 25.8%, of which about half (51.6%) are doing it on a temporary basis due to the pandemic.
Telework was most common in Ontario and Quebec, led by Toronto and Montreal, ranging from 40% to 44%, while only 17% to 23% of workers in the Atlantic provinces and 20 % of Saskatchewan workers worked from home during the same period.