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OTTAWA — The vigour that carried the Canadian labour market on its impressive run in 2017 hit a speed bump to start this year with its largest one-month job drop in nine years.

The economy lost 88,000 positions — all of them part time — in January for its biggest employment decline in a single month since 2009, Statistics Canada’s latest jobs survey revealed Friday.

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The dip helped push the national unemployment rate up to 5.9 per cent, from a revised 5.8 per cent the previous month.

The decrease was driven by the loss of 137,000 part-time positions, including more than 59,000 in Ontario. It was the biggest one-month collapse in part-time work since the agency started gathering the data in 1976.

For Ontario, some experts raised the possibility of a link between the provincial drop and the introduction last month of a controversial minimum-wage hike.

To partially offset the declines, Statistics Canada said the economy added 49,000 full-time positions last month. The survey also detected stronger wage growth in January of 3.3 per cent, which also led some to point out possible connections to Ontario.