London-St. Thomas jobless rate falls to 5.2% in August

London’s unemployment rate fell for the third straight month in August, slipping to 5.2 per cent, down from 5.4 per cent the month before.

Statistics Canada says the London-St. Thomas economy created 600 jobs last month while there were 600 fewer people who claimed unemployment. London’s labour force was virtually unchanged.

After starting the year at 6.5 per cent, the jobless rate has now fallen over a full percentage point. It has stayed below six percent five months in a row.

The London-St. Thomas jobless rate hasn’t fallen below 5.3 per cent in 14 years.

However, London Chamber of Commerce CEO Gerry McCartney notes that the number doesn’t paint a full picture.

“The better number, and I find municipal politicians and even provincial ones are using this number more often, and that’s ‘how many people do you have in the workforce? What is the percentage of people compared to your overall population that are actually working?'” he explained.

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“If we’re sitting at 92 to 96 per cent, that’s not a bad number – I’d like to see it higher. But that number continues to erode the more people stop looking.”

Nationally, the Canadian economy lost 51,600 net jobs last month in a decrease that drove up the unemployment rate and essentially wiped out the big gain in July.

Stats Canada’s labour force survey says the jobless rate hit six per cent in August, up from 5.8 per cent in July.

Economists had expected an increase of 5,000 jobs for the month and the unemployment rate to be 5.9 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.

The employment drop last month was fuelled by a loss of 92,000 part-time positions, but on the positive side the number of full-time jobs rose by 40,400.

The August decline followed a comparable net increase of 54,100 positions in July.

Ontario experienced the biggest decrease of the provinces by far with a loss of 80,100 jobs, almost all of which were part-time positions.

The Ontario unemployment rate rose 0.3 percentage points in August, to 5.7 per cent.

With files from the Canadian Press.