Canadian Unemployment Increases in February

On Thursday, Statistics Canada (StatCan) reported that the number of Canadians receiving regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits rose 2.5% in February, an increase of 12,000 people, bringing the total to 494,000. This follows four consecutive months of little change.

Year-over-year, the number of regular EI beneficiaries rose 5.9%, or 28,000 people.

StatCan notes that fluctuations in the number of EI recipients generally reflect changes in the circumstances of various groups—such as individuals newly qualifying for benefits, returning to work, exhausting their benefits, or stopping payments for other reasons.

According to the Labour Force Survey, Canada’s unemployment rate in February was 6.6%, up 0.7 percentage points from a year earlier.