The Okanagan is feeling economic impact of COVID-19 crisis

Photo: Nicholas Johansen

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken an unprecedented toll on all sectors of Canada's economy, and new data shows an early indication of that impact, both nationally and locally in the Okanagan.

The Statistics Canada data, taken from March 15 to March 21 of this year, shows significant job losses back when serious measures to slow the spread the virus were just being put in place.

Across the Kelowna census metropolitan area, the unemployment rate rose 0.6 per cent to 5.9 per cent from February to March 2020, a jump of 1.9 per cent from the previous year. That worked out to a loss of about 2,000 jobs between February and March of this year.

The unemployment rate jumped even higher across the entire Thompson-Okanagan region, from 5.3 per cent in March 2019 to 7.2 per cent last month.

The data shows the economic impact on the country early on in the pandemic though, and B.C.'s Finance Minister Carole James says she expects the numbers to only get worse.

“I certainly think that this is going to become more challenging, I think these are very early numbers,” James said Thursday morning. “We declared a state of emergency just after that March 15 date. This is very early in the pandemic so I do believe we are going to see tougher numbers coming in the next round of statistics that come out.”

Canada-wide, the unemployment rate jumped 2.2 per cent to 7.8 per cent between February and March of this year. This was the largest single-month jump in unemployment since the data was first collected in 1976. This translated to more than one million jobs lost across the country.

During the data's reference week of March 15-21, 1.3 million Canadians did not work at all, while another 800,000 had their hours cut by at least half, for a total of 3.1 million people who've been heavily impacted. That works out to about 10 per cent of the country's population and more than 15 per cent of its labour force.

Young people have been hit hardest economically, with employment dropping by 15.4 per cent for those aged 15 to 24, bringing the youth employment rate to 49.1 per cent – the lowest it's been since data was first recorded in 1976.

Unsurprisingly, the largest hit industry was accommodation and food service, which saw a loss of 294,000 jobs – a 23.9 per cent drop.

“These are difficult times and it's important that we recognize that and we provide the supports as we're doing through our programs for people and businesses who are doing everything they can to hang on through this crisis,” James said.