SD&G, Ont. – Cornwall and Eastern Ontario’s job picture took a turn for the worse in the middle of summer as the August unemployment rate headed higher. The regional unemployment rate for Eastern Ontario was 7% last month. That’s up from 6.7% in July. In Cornwall, the unemployment rate jumped 0.1% from July to August to end up at 6.4%. The numbers from Statistics Canada suggest the size of the labour force (growing by roughly 900 positions) far outpaced the number of people unemployed (roughly 100 positions were lost between July and August) pushing the unemployment rate up as a percentage of the labour force.
In Ontario, the jobless rate fell to 7.4% from 7.5% in July. Across the country, the economy shed 11,000 jobs between July an August but the national unemployment rate stayed the same at 7%. Most of the job losses were part-time. Analysts had hoped to add 10,000 positions.
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