Brantford’s jobless rate has fallen by three percentage points in the last year, setting a new record low last month.
The city’s October unemployment rate was 3.2%, down from 3.6% in September and 6.2% a year ago in October 2018, based on seasonally adjusted estimates released Friday by Statistics Canada.
Brantford’s jobless rate sits well below that of surrounding large metropolitan areas, with Hamilton’s the next best at 4.8%. Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, St. Catharines-Niagara, and Guelph all have unemployment rates at or above the Ontario average of 5.4%, while London’s tops 6%.
While Brantford’s jobless rate has been falling over the last few months, other numbers have been moving in a negative direction. In particular, the number of people who are not in the labour force – those neither working nor looking for work – has been increasing. Since July, an estimated 4,000 more people have been classed as “not in labour force” by Statistics Canada.
