Horrible

Horrible. The word used to describe the job losses in January. I had a friend tell me that the economic crisis would not have as deep an impact on Canada. Unfortunately that is not the case. On a per capita basis, these numbers are very bad.

Canada’s job losses in January surpassed anything seen during the previous economic downturns in the 1980s and 1990s, Statistics Canada said Friday.

With the economy staggering in recession, Canada’s unemployment rate shot up by 0.6 percentage points in January to 7.2 per cent as 129,000 jobs were lost. Almost all of the job losses were in full-time work.

Since October, the battered Canadian economy has lost 213,000 jobs.

Reaction of world financial markets to the shockingly poor jobs report was negative. The Canadian dollar traded down 1.02 cents at 80.21 cents US.

The job losses far exceeded the drop of 40,000 that economists had been projecting. “Horrible” and “shockingly poor” were some of the words they used in reaction to the January jobless figures.

Via.