UPDATED:
Bad news gets worse for the number of jobs lost in B.C. during this pandemic.
The unemployment rate in Kamloops now sits at 12.3 per cent as of the end of April, which is double the unemployment rate from April of 2019 (6.3 per cent). That’s also up from 9.7 per cent in March and 8.8 per cent in February.
The province, as a whole, lost 264,100 jobs in April, and the unemployment rate now sits at 11 per cent.
This is an incredible jump from before the pandemic, when our unemployment number in British Columbia was just five per cent, leading the country. And the numbers today, in fact, aren’t the full picture, because many of those who lost employment are counted as not in the labor force rather than unemployed. Because they wanted work, but they didn’t look for work because of the lack of opportunities right now because of COVID-19,” Finance Minister Carole James says.
“If we look at the total impact of COVID-19 in March and April, we lost 396,500 jobs. And let’s remember, those jobs are people. They’re families, they’re businesses who have been impacted severely.”
She says nearly half of those job losses were in the food and retail sectors.
The unemployment rate in the Thompson-Okanagan, meanwhile, is now at 9 per cent. The national unemployment rate is at 13 per cent.
James also spoke about the B.C. Worker Benefit which came online last week, which is a one-time, tax-free credit from government of $1,000. She says the government has processed and approved more than 400,000 applications in its first week, which totals $400 million.
James had predicted in early April that the job losses would get significantly worse from March, when 132,000 jobs were lost.
As for whether the worst is over for the economic fallout, “I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, I’m afraid. But I think now that we’ve started our gradual restart on the economy, we will be watching very carefully in the months of May and June,” James tells reporters on a conference call.
“I think they’ll be key to see, as businesses start up, as we start to see people hopefully going back to being employed, we’ll start to have a better sense of what we’re looking at.
“I don’t want to sugar coat this. I think it’s going to be a challenging road ahead. But I’m also confident that with the work that’s happening, the work we’re seeing around the restart and the way businesses are stepping up to the plate, I’m confident we’re going to start to see recovery occur.”
