Even though the federal government has been encouraging our record population growth with the promise of jobs, it seems that the employment market in cities like Toronto is the worst some have ever seen it.

Residents have been flocking to platforms like Reddit in recent months to seek help in what feels like their never-ending career hunt, with a few claiming to have applied to hundreds, even thousands of positions without any solid leads.

And, new unemployment numbers from Statistics Canada bolster this anecdotal evidence..

I applied to my 1000th job today (yes, I tracked them) since August 2023 and have gotten only ONE interview. Is it me, my resume, or are am I just s**t out of luck?
byu/TheMostQuailed inontario

According to the government body's most recent Labour Force Survey, unemployment rose to 5.8 per cent across the country in February, as "employment gains continue to be outpaced by population growth," which was a record 430,000 or so in the third quarter of last year alone.

This is especially noticeable in Toronto, where the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate rose far above the national average, to 7.4 per cent last month.

Uunemployment in the city is yet again rising after stabilizing post-lockdown. Graph from CREA.

This is 0.3 point jump from January 2024, and a 1.7 point jump from February of 2023 — representing 75,000 more unemployed people over the last year, while our number of working-age people rose by millions.

As noted by real estate news site Better Dwelling, this is far beyond the rate of unemployment growth that is usually seen before large-scale recession.

Rant: This is the worst job market I have ever seen
byu/Intelligent-Rent-615 inontario

Looking at the province overall, Ontario's employment numbers remained steady, while provinces like Alberta and Nova Scotia have added tens of thousands more people to the workforce since the fall.

"The employment rate fell from a recent peak of 62.2 per cent reached in June 2023 to 60.6 per cent in February 2024, as the population aged 15 and older in the province grew by 316,000 (+2.5 per cent)," StatCan writes of the nation's most populous province.

"With more people in the labour force looking for work, the unemployment rate increased 0.3 percentage points to 6.5 per cent from January to February 2024."

Can’t seem to land any work.
byu/golaface13 inontario

Experts have been sharing concerns about Canada's lofty immigration targets and skyrocketing population for months, saying growth is putting our future "on potentially shaky ground" and that the country is in a state of "textbook demand shock" that will only make the cost of living worse.