Saskatchewan employers generated 2,200 new full-time jobs in November. And they shed 600 part-time positions.
Those figures meant our unemployment rate dropped significantly, from 6-percent in October to 5.6-percent last month.
It also kept us on track with the other Prairie provinces which produced the biggest employment gains last month. Alberta increased by one-percent and Manitoba was right behind them with growth of nine-tenths of a point.
The one unusual tidbit in the monthly Labor Force Survey results is that Saskatchewan’s workforce actually declined in November, even though we saw our working age population grow.
Typically, when we see this sort of result, it means more people have opted out of the workforce: either not bothering to look for a job or are just taking a break between positions.
At the local level, Regina and Saskatoon both posted unemployment rates in the 5.5-percent range and that is quite a bit better than cities such as Edmonton or Calgary. Both of them are in the 8-percent range, just slightly behind Windsor which has the highest unemployment rate among major cities.
