Looking back since July 2002 is even more depressing. Particularly for young people trying to enter the job market. I didn't collect the data by age groupings, but a recent report by the Canadian Labour Congress suggests that people aren't leaving for retirement and the youngest generation is losing out the most. As the CLC points out, the obvious reason for this would be that as RRSP's have lost value over the past couple of years, the Boomers are choosing to stay employed longer in order to recoup their losses.
As well as the high unemployment rate, there are more troubling indicators; the employment rate (the proportion of the working age population with jobs), the participation rate (those with jobs or looking for jobs) and the levels of part-time employment. The employment rate is currently at par with July 2002, negating over 8 years of economic prosperity. The low participation rate suggests that more and more people are giving up on even looking for employment. Jim Stanford with the Progressive Economics group does a great job of explaining the true depth of this problem when unemployment is adjusted for this drop in participation. Check out the dashboard below and see the differences by province.
