File photo: The Canadian Press
The unemployment rate in the Kelowna metropolitan area dropped another percentage point in September, but it still remained much higher than usual.
Statistics Canada released its monthly labour report on Friday, and it found Kelowna and area’s unemployment rate to be 8%; it was 9% in August. It is one of the lowest unemployment rates among the 35 Canadian metropolitan areas that were surveyed in September. Kelowna’s unemployment rate hit a high of 10.2% in June.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kelowna and area’s unemployment rate was usually in the neighbourhood of 4% to 4.5%. When the numbers are crunched, the Central Okanagan’s unemployment rate has increased 87% from September 2019.
According to Statistics Canada, there were 8,600 unemployed people in the Kelowna area last month.
The unemployment rate over the entire Thompson Okanagan region in September was 9%.
Overall there were 1.8 million unemployed Canadians in September, which was down 214,000 from August and continuing the four-month downward trend from the record high of 2.6 million in May.
The number of people who wanted to work but did not search for a job (580,000) has been decreasing since peaking at 1.5 million in April, according to the government’s numbers.
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