Statistics Canada’s Employment Insurance numbers for June show little change.
The number of EI recipients across the country increased very slightly – by 1.5% over last year and 0.1% over May.
545,900 Canadians were collecting EI benefits in June.
Prince George is on par with the national trend. The number of EI recipients stayed pretty much the same. A very slight increase saw 1720 people collect employment insurance in June. That’s an increase of 20 people from May.
Stats Canada analyst Lahouria Yssaad says an increase that small isn’t statistically significant.
“When we see a number like 20, we consider it as insignificant, it’s so small. However, if we look at the trend for Prince George, we can see that it’s been going slightly downward…starting roughly from the beginning of 2016.”
She says the city is in a similar situation as the rest of the province but on a smaller scale.
“That reflects very much the provincial trend. For the entire province, we see a downward trend starting from July 2015.”
The agency’s June numbers put BC’s labour market in a good light once again. The province saw the number of people receiving EI go down by 2.1% compared to May.
The year over year trend is even better – compared to June 2015, the number of people receiving EI benefits in BC has decreased by 5.8% to 50,200.
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