Unemployment stayed mostly flat in Prince George for July, when compared both to last month and last year.
New data from Statistics Canada puts the city’s jobless rate at 7.7% for July, the same as June and down marginally from the same time last year; 7.8%.
Prince George has experienced a bump in unemployment since May, driven by students looking for work.
Stats Canada Analyst Vincent Ferrao says that is in line with what is taking place in the rest of BC “The (student) unemployment rate is 13.7%… in July 2015 it was 10.6%” noting that while overall student employment numbers rose, there were more students in the labour market looking for work.
Provincial numbers indicated 12,000 more people working in July, extending an upward trend that began in the spring of 2015. However many of those jobs are part time, with full time employment actually contracting last month.
The unemployment rate in the province declined 0.3 percentage points to 5.6%, the lowest rate in the country. In the 12 months to July, employment gains in British Columbia totalled 85,000 or 3.7%, the fastest growth rate among the provinces.
The national jobless rate sits at 6.9%
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