The national statistics office says Canada’s unemployment rate nudged down to 5.5% in September as the economy added 54,000 net new jobs, driven by gains in full-time work.
Statistics Canada says the jobs growth was largely concentrated in the health-care sector, and notes gains in the number of public-sector and self-employed workers.
The report says 70,000 of the new jobs were full-time, as the number of part-time workers declined.
The agency’s latest labour force survey says the country saw a rush last month of 49,400 new positions in services industries, but a drop of 21,000 jobs in the private sector.
Young workers aged 15 to 24 years old saw drops in the ranks of full- and part-time workers, inching their unemployment rate to 11.9% — not all that dissimilar from the same time one year ago.
Compared with a year earlier, the numbers show Canada added 456,000 jobs, for an increase of 2.4%.