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With commodity prices in free-fall — oil, Canada’s top natural resource export, is seeing 13-year lows in prices — it was no surprise when the country as a whole lost 5,700 jobs in January, according to Statistics Canada.

But it was striking that in the same period Ontario gained 7,500 jobs. The gains didn’t come from manufacturing, a sector that has picked up in recent months, but rather from the service sector, which can include everything from retail jobs to accounting, engineering and consulting.

“When I looked at the numbers, I sort of zoomed in on Ontario, because it was the only province that saw gains,” said Hendrik Brakel, senior director of economic, financial and tax policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Ottawa.

“But Ontario manufacturing actually lost 2,900 jobs in January; Ontario’s service-producing industries picked up 22,600 jobs. This has been a long-term trend where we’ve seen flat or declining trends in manufacturing and it’s the service industries that have seen the biggest gains.”