Article content

It was payback time for Canada’s labor market in January, with the biggest monthly job loss since the last recession — all part-time — as employers faced quickening wage gains.

Canada shed a net 88,000 jobs during the month, a sharp stop to a recent stellar performance that saw 2017 produce the biggest increase in jobs since 2002. The drop reflected a record loss of 137,000 part-time jobs, and a 49,000 gain in full-time work.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Canada just lost the most jobs in nine years, with biggest drop on record in part-time work Back to video

The employment drop coincided with an increase in the minimum wage in Canada’s largest province — Ontario. That fueled an acceleration of the national wage rate to an annualized pace of 3.3 per cent that was the fastest since 2015.

The report is a long-waited correction in a tightening labor market that is more consistent with an economy that has been slowing down since the second half of last year. While the unemployment rate increased to 5.9 per cent in January, it’s still near its record low of 5.8 per cent and the faster wage gains may give policy makers at the Bank of Canada more fodder to worry about inflation.