Canada added almost 1 million jobs in June but still almost 2 million down from pre-COVID-19 level | CBC News

Canada's economy added almost one million jobs last month, as businesses reopened after COVID-19 shutdowns.

Statistics Canada reported Friday that the economy added 953,000 jobs during June, on top of the 290,000 it gained the previous month.

But despite that two-month stretch, there are still 1.8 million fewer jobs in Canada today than there were in February.

The jobless rate fell to 12.3 per cent in June, down from the record high of 13.7 it hit in May.

More than half of the new jobs came from Ontario and Quebec, which added 378,000 and 248,000 jobs, respectively.

But every province added at least a small number of jobs.

Indeed, Statistics Canada said that the country's biggest city, Toronto, was still mostly locked down during the week it conducted its jobs survey for June, so any surge in Toronto's job numbers after the city entered Phase 2 of its reopening was excluded from this set of numbers and will likely show up in July's data.

New Brunswick added 22,000 jobs, meaning the province now has 97 per cent of the jobs it had pre-pandemic, making the province the national leader in the recovery.

At the lowest point in April, Statistics Canada says 5.5 million Canadian jobs were negatively impacted by the pandemic, with three million jobs completely gone and another 2.5 million being reduced in terms of hours or wages in some way.

By June, that first number was down by about two million, but the data agency says there are still 3.1 million workers who've either lost their jobs or have been otherwise negatively impacted by COVID-19.

Even after June's surge, there are about 10 per cent fewer people with a job in June than had one in February, before the pandemic began.

Leah Nord with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce was also cautiously optimistic about the overall numbers, although she said that the hard-hit accommodation and food services industry — which still has just two-thirds of the jobs it had in February — faces an uphill climb to full recovery.

Her reaction to hearing a million jobs being added during the month she was laid off was blunt: "That's nice, but I'm still unemployed.".