If the percentage of Canadians with a job today were the same as it was before the last recession, Canada would have 665,000 more working people, according to economist Jim Stanford.

Canada lost 28,900 jobs in April, StatsCan reported, surprising economists who had been looking for the economy to add about 12,000 jobs.

But Canada’s unemployment rate didn’t budge, sitting at 6.9 per cent. That’s because about 26,000 Canadians simply stopped looking for work, and therefore stopped being counted among the unemployed.

Canada’s employment rate — essentially the percentage of people who have a job — fell to 62.1 per cent, from 62.4 per cent a year earlier.

That’s the lowest rate since 2010, when Canada was struggling to climb out of the global financial crisis, notes Stanford, an economist with the United Auto Workers. The rate has been in steady decline since mid-2012.

(Another measure of this data, the labour force participation rate, is at its lowest point since 2001, at 66.1 per cent.)

The latest drop was “mainly the result of a decline in the participation rate of the population aged 25 to 54, the group most likely to participate in the labour market,” StatsCan noted.

By Stanford’s calculations, if Canada’s employment rate bounced back to its pre-recession peak, there would 665,000 more Canadians working today than there actually are.