Based on coverage from Global News and Times Colonist.
Canada’s job market managed a small bounce-back in March, adding 14,000 jobs after a rough start to the year, according to Statistics Canada. The headline unemployment rate stayed put at 6.7 per cent, the same level it jumped to after February’s loss of 84,000 jobs.
Despite the addition of 14,000 jobs in March, the overall employment landscape remains uncertain following a significant loss of 83,900 jobs in February, which also pushed the unemployment rate to its current level of 6.7% as detailed in our previous report on the Canada economy's job losses.
StatCan described employment as “little changed” overall in March, which is another way of saying the country is still trying to find steady footing after two straight months of losses to open 2026.
Canada jobs report shows modest March rebound
The 14,000-job gain came in roughly where economists expected, and StatCan said the month didn’t show big swings across age groups, full-time versus part-time work, or the private and public sectors.
Zooming out, the last stretch has been choppy: strong job growth through the final four months of 2025, then more than 100,000 positions lost across January and February, followed by this modest March recovery. On a year-over-year basis, total employment was up 87,000 jobs in March.
Unemployment rate holds at 6.7% nationally
Even with the March hiring uptick, the unemployment rate didn’t budge from 6.7 per cent.
Across age groups, the picture was also steady: - Core working age (25 to 54): 5.8 per cent unemployment, largely unchanged. - Youth (15 to 24): unchanged after rising in February to 13.8 per cent; still below the recent high of 14.6 per cent recorded in September 2025. - Canadians 55 and over: 4.9 per cent in March.
Service and resource sectors drive job gains
The biggest boost came from a broad StatCan bucket called “other services,” which includes repair and maintenance work. That category added 15,000 jobs in March, essentially reversing a similar-sized drop in February.
A few other areas also helped push the numbers into positive territory: - Professional, scientific and technical services posted gains. - Natural resources employment rose about three per cent, adding 10,000 jobs. Nearly half of those new natural resource jobs came from Alberta. - Manufacturing, described as tariff-sensitive in the report, added a few thousand jobs in March.
Finance and real estate sector leads losses
While several sectors were hiring, finance, insurance, real estate and leasing took the biggest hit, losing 11,000 jobs. StatCan called it the first significant monthly decline for that industry since November 2023.
Over a longer window, the economy is still showing some reshuffling. StatCan said health care employment was little changed month-to-month, but the sector was up 94,000 jobs compared with a year earlier. Over that same year-over-year period, manufacturing employment was down 44,000 jobs.
British Columbia job losses push unemployment higher
Regionally, British Columbia stood out for the wrong reasons. The province lost 19,000 jobs in March, following a similar decline in February. That pushed B.C.’s unemployment rate up to 6.7 per cent, which StatCan said is the province’s highest jobless rate in about a decade outside the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wage growth hits fastest pace in 18 months
Average hourly wages rose 4.7 per cent compared with March last year, up from 3.9 per cent in February and the fastest pace since October 2024.
StatCan cautioned that part of the jump is about the “composition of employment,” meaning fewer lower-paying jobs in the mix can mechanically lift the average. When StatCan adjusts for those compositional effects, it estimates wage growth at 3.6 per cent in March, similar to January and February.
All of this lands just ahead of the Bank of Canada’s next interest rate decision on April 29, with March’s labour numbers serving as its final read on employment conditions before that call.
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