TORONTO – The OECD says Canada’s labour market is doing better than in many other countries but it hasn’t fully recovered to pre-recession levels.
The Paris-based think-tank says the percentage of working-age Canadians with a job was just 65 per cent in the first quarter – about two percentage points below the pre-crisis level in the fourth quarter of 2007.
It also says 11 per cent of Canada’s unemployed have been searching for a job for more than one year – a deterioration of four percentage points from the low point in the fourth quarter of 2008.
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And it estimates 13 per cent of people in Canada between the ages of 15 and 29 are both out of work and out of school – one percentage point above the pre-recession level.
The report also found that while wages in Canada have grown faster than the OECD average since the crisis, wage growth was slower during 2008-2015 than it had been during 2000-2007.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development issued its employment outlook a day before Statistics Canada announces the June unemployment rate.
The OECD notes that Canada’s unemployment rate in May was 6.9 per cent – improved from a recessionary high at 8.6 per cent in the third quarter of 2009, but still one percentage point worse than before the downturn.