Wow that is a major hike ! We always hear the politicians make big statements when it goes down .1% and how they have been working hard to do that for us, now lets hear nothing from them when it goes up .8%

Let's not try to make this into a bad news story, please! Our economy is doing just fine, despite the chicken little people who love to wring their hands and worry. Unemployment rates fluxuate up and down regularly, and these small movements mean nothing in the short term. Long term and/or huge movements are much more interesting to make opinions on.

Re-read the article......more workers entered the work force. That means there are either people who have moved here or those that were not looking are not looking but not satisfied with what is available. Short term this has nothing to do with the economy and more to do with the workers choosing the jobs they are going to take on.

The article states more people entered the Labour Force. This is somewhat different that the Work Force. More people in the Labour Force means more people looking for work. Thats why the unemployment number went up.

There are help wanted signs up all over the place in the food and similar service indusry sectors.

The jobs don't match the skill sets, or the pay rates those who are looking for the jobs have .....

There were signs up at the UNBC residences offering jobs, including short term jobs of planting the landscaping around the new Sports Complex.

Those and many other signals indicate to me that the physical labout pool around PG is depleted.

Sometimes some of us wish we had Mexico as our neighbour .....

;-)

"More people in the Labour Force means more people looking for work. That’s why the unemployment number went up."

A returning University or College student taking an apparent light load of 2 credit courses per semester so that he/she can put themselves through the post secondary education system without borrowing too much money comes back to PG after working elsewhere during the summer from May to early August since the treeplanting season is over or may have chosen to take a few weeks of vacation before school starts back up.

He/she applies for UIC towards the end of August and goes on the board as looking for work, which he/she is very truthfully doing.

So the number of people looking for work goes up. There are about 6,000 students, if not more since the numbers we see are FTE students and that 2 course person is only 40% FTE. Put just 10% of them into that category and the number of people looking for work has just risen by 600 in August.

A raw statistic, without background information is generally useless. I just provided one example of why number can change dramatically form one month to the next. The obvious question that then needs to be asked, is whether this is the norm at this time of year.

So, who has the answer?

Sheesh!!
I gave up trying to answer Owl`s question on drilling down to the fourth level of HRDC`s site.
Anyone care to continue from here

http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/employment/employment_measures/index.shtml