If you thought March's unemployment numbers were bad, April is much worse.
According to the latest job market statistics released by Statistics Canada today (May 8), roughly two million jobs were lost last month across the country whereas March saw close to one million jobs lost.
In Prince George, the unemployment rate rose from 8.8 per cent in March to 10.1 per cent last month.
British Columbia also saw a sharp increase going from 7.2 per cent in March to 11.5 in April.
Canada saw a major loss in the job market for April with the unemployment rate shooting up more than five points to 13 per cent.
Employment dropped by close to two million in April, bringing the total employment decline since the beginning of the COVID-19 economic shutdown to over three million.
StatsCanada says last month, both full-time work and part-time work saw losses.
Full-time fell by 1,472,000 jobs (-9.7 per cent) while part-time jobs decreased by 522,000 jobs (-17.1 per cent).
Since February, full-time work has lost 1,946,000 (-12.5 per cent) and part-time seeing a decrease of 1,059,000 (-29.6 per cent).
The job loss impacts since February (-15.7) is worse than declines recorded in previous job market downturn.
StatsCanada says the numbers are worse than the 1982 recession where a drop of 612,000 jobs were observed (-5.4 per cent) over a period of roughly 17 months.
Vancouver was one of the major cities hit by job loss, dropping 17.4 per cent which is an equivalent of 256,000 jobs lost.
Losses in the goods-producing sector were the largest in construction (-314,000; -21.1 per cent) and manufacturing (-267,000; -15.7 per cent).
In the services sector, job loss was led by wholesale and retail trade (-375,000; -14.0 per cent) and accommodation and food services (-321,000; -34.3 per cent).
