Canada added 154,000 jobs last month, pushing jobless rate down to pandemic low of 6%

Canada's economy added 154,000 new jobs last month, surging past expectations and enough to move the jobless rate down to just six per cent.

Statistics Canada reported Friday that the jobless rate fell by 0.7 percentage points, to six per cent. That's the lowest jobless rate since the pandemic began.

Prior to COVID-19, in February 2020, Canada had a jobless rate of 5.7 per cent. It topped out at 13.7 per cent in May of that year, before sliding steadily lower.

The data agency calculates that more than 19.3 million people in Canada had a job last month. That's 183,000 more than had one pre-pandemic.

There was good news on the wage front, too, as the data agency calculates that wages during November 2021 were 7.7 per cent higher than they were the same month two years ago, before the pandemic. That's an extra $2.18 an hour, on average, since the same period two years ago.

Workers on the whole are moving up the wage scale. The number of people making less than $12 an hour has fallen dramatically over the past two years, from more than a quarter of a million people to just 165,000 people today. There are also fewer people earning between $12 and $20 an hour, as that number has fallen from 5.1 million workers to 4.4 million now.

Those salary bands are shrinking because people are moving up the pay scale. The number of people making between $20 and $30 an hour has grown from 4.9 million to 5.2 million, and the ranks of those in the highest band have swollen to more than 6.8 million people. That's more than a million more than there were two years ago.

While higher wages are good for workers, they're a double-edged sword, as the cost of living is going up quickly, too. Those bigger paycheques are tempered by the fact that Statistics Canada data shows prices have increased by 5.3 per cent compared with two years ago.

Tanya Gullison, chief revenue officer with human resources consulting firm LHH, said people are heading back to the workforce in droves because they need the money to pay for the higher cost of everything.

"We're still seeing a significant war for talent," she said in an interview. "We're finding that employers have to do really unexpected things to attract and retain the talent that they have."

Gullison said companies winning that war are the ones that are able to entice the best workers by offering flexible work requirements, good benefits and other perks.

But cold, hard, cash is enticing people, too. Statistics Canada data says average wage gains are increasing at a faster rate for new hires than they are for existing workers.

"Over the next fiscal year, bonuses and other perks are also likely to trickle over as a means of drawing new talent and retaining existing staff," Gullison said.

Jason Murray, president of recruiting firm BIPOC Executive Search, says while companies are more optimistic about the recovery, they're also worried "about whether or not they'll be able to compete in a market that is looking for talent all at the same time," he said in an interview.