The NWT has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and is well below its own average for unemployment rate compared to previous years.
Unemployment was at 4.5 per cent, compared to the 10-year average for May, which sits at 7.5 per cent.
The NWT also had the lowest unemployment rate of any jurisdiction in Canada in March, according to the NWT Bureau of Statistics, when it sat at 6.5 per cent.
That’s down from a peak of 10.8 per cent in August. Employment has been on a consistent incline since then, according to the NWT Bureau of Statistics’ report.
The NWT’s employment rate was 69.4 per cent, increasing by 1.2 percentage points from 68.2 per cent in April. That came out to 400 more employed persons in the territory, bringing the total up to 23,600.
In total over the past year, NWT’s labour force grew by 1,400 people and the total number of people employed grew by 2,200 — almost all of those gains were in service producing industries, according to the Bureau.
The employment rate is also 6.3 per cent higher this year compared to May 2020 — although those numbers will have been significantly impacted by the pandemic.
That’s higher than the national average, which stood at 59.4 per cent for the country, a slight increase from the previous month and 5.2 percentage points higher than May 2020.
Between April and May 2021, all Canadian jurisdictions saw increases in employment rates with the exception of Nunavut, Yukon and Nova Scotia.
May was also a good month for youth, as people aged 15 to 24 saw the highest employment rate in the NWT since 2003, 51.9 per cent.
