Employment in New Brunswick took a major hit in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Statistics Canada’s latest labour force survey, released Thursday, said the province lost 10,000 full-time jobs and 5,200 part-time positions.
That pushed the unemployment rate up 1.9 percentage points to 8.8 per cent.
Nationally, the economy lost more than one-million jobs and the unemployment rate climbed by 2.2 percentage points to 7.8 per cent – the largest one-month increase since comparable data became available in 1976.
Of those who were employed, 2.1-million people reported working less than half of their usual hours or not at all.
The numbers reflect labour market conditions during the week of March 15 to 21, around the time many provinces and territories declared states of emergency.
