Having high proportions of people with post-secondary degrees and working in public administration has historically assisted the capital region weather employment ups and downs, a Statistics Canada analyst says.
Ottawa-Gatineau reported that only a small uptick in its unemployment rate last month as the Canadian economy shed 207,000 jobs before new pandemic restrictions in Ontario and elsewhere, according to new Statistics Canada figures released.
The agency’s monthly labour force report records that employment and unemployment increased by a few thousand in Ottawa-Gatineau, although the size of the area’s labour force grew even more, jumping from just over 812,000 people in March to 822,500 in April. Employed as well as unemployed people looking for work make up the labour force.
That the National Capital Region continues to brave the pandemic better than many other cities across the country is hardly surprising, Statistics Canada analyst Vincent Hardy says.
Ottawa-Gatineau has one of the lowest unemployment rates of a region of its size in the country, which Hardy attributes to having a large number of people in fields like public administration — due to the federal government being a major employer — that are easier to move to remote work. As a result, the region was better suited to brave the impact of pandemic closures.
Ottawa also has a highly educated workforce, which also contributes to its strong and stable job numbers, Hardy said. In the 2016 census, 43.5 per cent of Ottawans had bachelor’s degrees, the highest of any city in Canada.
“I think factors like the high proportion of people with bachelor’s degrees, and also the high proportion of people in public administration. That contributes to, historically, why we have that lower baseline,” Hardy said.
“To me, it’s kind of expected that we would see this kind of thing in Ottawa just because of what we know about how these industries have been able to adapt to the pandemic.”
At 6.7 per cent, Ottawa-Gatineau (the Quebec-only side of the metro area had a slightly lower rate of 6.6, while the Ontario side sat at 6.7) would be linked with Peterborough for the third lowest unemployment rate in Ontario, while it is more than double the population size of Brantford and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, the two metro areas ahead of it.
