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That more than reversed the 50,700-job gain in February, while economists had forecast an increase in jobs of up to 6,500 during the month.

As a result, the unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points to 7.2% in March. Forecasters had expected the rate to remain at 7%.

“It doesn’t get much uglier than this,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.

“The components of the report amplified the weakness,” Mr. Porter said. “When you dig into the details, it suggests things were even worse than the ugly headline would suggest.”

Adding to the gloom were Canadian trade figures for February, which showed the country’s deficit increased to $1.02-billion on lower exports and higher imports. Economists had expected a small surplus.

There was more negative news south of the border, as U.S. employers hired workers in March at the slowest pace in nine months. The U.S. economy added just 88,000 jobs last month, while the jobless rate eased to 7.6% as more people dropped out of the work force, Labor Department data showed Friday. Analysts had expected a gain of 200,000 jobs last month.

John Curran, senior vice-president at CanadianForex in Toronto, said “obviously, a huge [Canadian] drop like this is a bit of shock.”

“The outlook is not that great,” he said. “A double whammy for Canada — bad U.S., bad Canada, is bad for Canada.”

Darcy Briggs, portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton Investments in Calgary, said “there was a pretty large disconnect between robust jobs reports [in Canada] and then you had mediocre data everywhere else. So something wasn’t squaring up.”