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Despite thousands of new jobs added in recent months, swelling the number of people employed in the Windsor area to a record level, the local region still has the highest unemployment rate in Canada, according to Statistics Canada’s latest labour force survey.
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There were 196,300 people employed locally in November, according to the survey released Friday. With 2,700 new jobs added last month to the Windsor census metropolitan area, which includes Lakeshore, Tecumseh, LaSalle and Amherstburg, the local unemployment rate experienced a 0.1 percentage dip, to 8.7 per cent.
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“There’s a lot of good news in this month’s figures,” Workforce WindsorEssex CEO Justin Falconer told the Star. “We’ve bucked the trend in Ontario and Canada that saw the rates go up.”
The national unemployment rate rose 0.3 to 6.8 per cent. That’s the highest non-COVID era (2020, 2021) figure since January 2017. In Ontario, the rate climbed 0.8 to 7.6 per cent.
“The number of people finding employment locally was more than double the population growth (1,100 new residents),” said Falconer. “It was a strong showing by the region.”
The Windsor CMA has added 12,100 jobs over the past 12 months, a growth of 6.5 per cent, and 20,500 jobs since November 2022 (11.6 per cent).
Though the unemployment rate remains elevated, the percentage of the population that is employed rose 0.6 to 58.8 per cent, the highest number this year.
“The Windsor area has never seen this level of job growth annually,” Falconer said.
“The job gains in November were led by manufacturing, which added 3,800 jobs, month-over-month.
“We now have 40,200 people employed in the manufacturing sector. It’s normally been between 32,000 and 36,000.”
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The Windsor area’s strong manufacturing performance was in stark contrast to the rest of Canada. There were 29,000 fewer people working in the sector in November, with 20,000 of those manufacturing jobs losses coming in Ontario.
Falconer said Stellantis’s Windsor Assembly Plant has ramped up production of the new Dodge Charger Daytona products and has been regularly operating six and seven days per week.
In addition, there has been a stream of announcements of local supply chain companies expanding and the NextStar Energy battery plant has been hiring steadily as it moves closer to ramping up production.
The other sector that recorded solid growth was transportation and warehousing, with a gain of 900 jobs.
The sectors recording the biggest job losses were construction (800) and accommodation and food services (800). Falconer said the construction losses were seasonal, but the 13,200 construction workers still employed is higher than at this time in each of the last two Novembers.
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The expanding local economy is continuing to attract new residents.
After record population growth last year, the Windsor CMA added 14,400 people from November 2023 to November 2024. That’s an increase of 48.4 per cent in the growth rate compared to the previous 12 months.
“We’re continuing to see evidence the community is attracting people,” Falconer said. “Not only are we attracting them, but the percentage of people employed increased quite a bit.
I only see this continuing as NextStar and the supplier plants haven’t really started ramping up yet.”
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