BC’s unemployment numbers up again
Posted March 11, 2011 6:39 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VICTORIA (NEWS1130) – BC’s finance minister is trying to find the positive in less-than-stellar unemployment numbers.
Stats-Can says our jobless rate rose to just under 9 per cent in February, up for the second month in a row. While we added almost 9,000 part-time jobs last month, we lost 1,800 full-time jobs.
Colin Hansen says we’re still up from when the Liberals first took power and it isn’t all bad. “I think there’s sort of a mix of some good news and some not-so-good news. I think the good news is that there are 8,900 new jobs in British Columbia, so the number of people working in British Columbia is up.”
Hansen says the numbers aren’t indicative of a trend. “If you go back and look at the Labour Force Survey from a month ago, what it actually showed was there was a decline in the number of people working in British Columbia but a significant increase in the number of full-time jobs month over month. There’s a fair amount of volatility from month to month.”
The national unemployment rate is just under 8 per cent, a full point lower than BC’s.
