Greater Victoria recorded the lowest unemployment in the country despite an uptick last month.
New figures from Statistics Canada record the unemployment for Victoria Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) at 3.5 per cent in January 2020, up from 3.4 per cent in December 2019. Quebec City recorded the second-lowest unemployment rate with 4.1 per cent. Several communities including Kelowna tied for third with a rate of 4.2 per cent.
Looking across the British Columbia, the provincial unemployment rate stood at 4.5 per cent, down 0.3 per cent.
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The other CMAs in British Columbia recorded mixed unemployment figures. The unemployment rate in Vancouver CMA dropped to 4.5 per cent from 4.8, while the rate for Abbotsford-Mission rose to five per cent from 4.9 per cent.
Nationally, the unemployment rate dropped 0.1 per cent to 5.5 per cent.
The severe effects of January weather affected the new figures.
During the survey’s reference week for January 2020 (January 12 to 18), 390,000 employees in Canada lost work hours due to the weather, with the majority (61.1 per cent) in British Columbia.
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