Saskatchewan lost 6,500 jobs in October, StatsCan labour force survey says

Saskatchewan lost 6,500 jobs between September and October, according toStatistics Canada's latest labour force survey.

That comes after two months in a row where the province gained jobs.

The seasonally adjusted numbers in the report, released Friday,found that Saskatchewan's unemployment rate which fell from 6.3 in September to 6.2 per inOctober is one of the lower rates in the country, and is below the national average of 6.7 per cent.

Statistics Canada says the small change in the province's employment rate last month is due to more people leaving the labour force even as jobs were lost.

Nationally, the Statistics Canada report found that the natural resources sector was hit particularly hardin October, largely due to losses in Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan.

Overall, the natural resources sector in Canada is now employing nearly 30,000 fewer people than it did before the pandemic, the report said.

Saskatchewan's agriculture and manufacturing sectors each lost nearly 2,000 jobs from September to October as well.

Saskatchewan NDP jobs and economy critic Aleana Young said those jobs numbers point to governmental mismanagement of the economy and the pandemic.

"We have the worst of both worlds under this government Saskatchewan had the worst [COVID-19] death rate in the country and the worst rate of job losses," she told reporters at the Saskatchewan Legislature on Friday.

"Protecting Saskatchewan jobs starts with listening to the experts, getting the pandemic under control, and then finally coming up with a real jobs plan to get Saskatchewan people back to work."

Young saideven as other provinces are recovering or surpassing their pre-pandemic employment levels, full-time jobs in Saskatchewan have dropped by over 10,000 since the start of the pandemic, according to the Statistics Canada data.

"Saskatchewan people are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet," she said. "The Sask. Party tried to put the economy ahead of people's health and they failed at both."

Ministers from the Saskatchewan Party were not immediately available for comment.