OTTAWA — Canada's labor market lost more than a million jobs in March as the effects of the coronavirus walloped the economy, according to the latest federal employment report Thursday.
The plunge represented 5.3 percent of all jobs — from one month to the next — in a country of 37 million people.
The losses helped drive the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent, up from 5.6 percent in February, for its largest one-month increase since comparable data became available in 1976.
The grim Canadian snapshot arrived as the employment toll of Covid-19 in the United States was further revealed in new details Thursday, with the Labor Department reporting that unemployment claims remained elevated last week at 6.6 million.
Canada's typically unremarkable Labour Force Survey had deeper significance this time around as the most-notable early indicator of the coronavirus' hit to the economy.
The public has watched job losses pile up around the country. Now, there's data to back it up.
"The economic reality of COVID-19 came into sharper focus this morning with absolutely massive job losses seen across Canada," Royce Mendes, executive director for CIBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note.
Mendes warned that April's employment reading is likely to be even worse because the shutdowns only really began in earnest around the middle of March. Some employers, he added, might have tried to hold on to some employees in the early weeks of the forced closures.