The summer holidays drew to a close last month with a reduction in the number of part-time jobs being offered by Saskatchewan employers.
According to the monthly labor force survey which tracks employment trends, Saskatchewan payrolls saw almost 5,000 part-time spots trimmed while full-time employment rose by roughly 2,300.
It marked one of the few months this year that job growth did not match the arrival of new residents into the province. Saskatchewan has been one of the few jurisdictions where immigrant arrivals was matched by payroll expansion but August put us in with the rest of the country, unable to generate new openings at a pace equal to the number of new arrivals.
Nonetheless, the unemployment rate was unmoved at 5.4-percent which remains the lowest in the nation and well below the national 6.6-percent rate.
While the month-to-month picture showed a small pullback, the year-over-year trend is still one of growth on all counts. Saskatchewan employers generated almost 20,000 new positions in the past twelve months and 80-percent of that growth was in the full-time jobs category.
