The employment gain was negated by a similar expansion of the total labour force, which meant more people were actively seeking jobs during the month.
“The increase this month is encouraging,” said Statistics Canada analyst Vincent Ferrao in an interview, noting that the past few months have been marked by little or no improvement to employment levels, or by declines. “It’s the first positive sign we’ve seen in several months. The last time we saw something approaching this was in June 2010, when there was a gain of about 4,000.”
All of the job gains were seen on the Ottawa side of the region, the data showed, as Gatineau had zero employment growth as well as a small increase of 800 to its labour force.
Mr. Ferrao said staffing demand in the services industries helped to push up employment month-over-month, although he noted sector-specific numbers are not seasonally adjusted. Public-sector employment, which can be affected by seasonality, declined by about 2,000 jobs month-over-month, to 175,000, he said.
Meanwhile, the tech sector – the region’s other big employer – saw a small decrease of 400 jobs, to 46,000.
Nationally, the jobless rate declined 0.1 percentage points to 7.7 per cent. This was largely because of the overall labour force shrinking by 14,900 people, as employment stayed relatively unchanged, edging down by just 1,500 jobs.
Employment levels in Canada have risen by 1.8 per cent over the past year, or by 305,000 jobs. That upward movement has also been seen in Ottawa-Gatineau, although to a lesser degree, as the region recorded a 0.7-per-cent employment increase year-over-year.
Mr. Ferrao said the biggest driver for the 12-month gain was the services sector, which had an overall increase of about 5,000 jobs.
The public administration segment made a significant contribution of 10,000 jobs, followed by the information, culture and recreation sector, which added about 7,000 jobs. That sector employed about 33,000 people in March.
Both the health care and social assistance and the education sectors also had strong job gains of 6,000 each, Mr. Ferrao added.
