Employment Insurance beneficiaries lowest on record in Canada

In November, 396,000 Canadians received regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits, down by 23,000 (-5.4 per cent) from October and this was the lowest number of EI beneficiaries on record since comparable data became available in 1997, outside of the summer of 2020 when the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit was in place, according to a report released Friday by Statistics Canada.

As reported by the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the unemployment rate edged down by 0.1 percentage point to 5.1 per cent in November.

“According to the LFS, the number of core-aged people who left a job involuntarily in the past 12 months and remained unemployed during the LFS reference week was 317,000 in November, down 3.2 per cent (-11,000) from November 2021 and down 18.6 per cent (-72,000) compared with November 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic (not seasonally adjusted). This decline in the number of people leaving a job involuntarily could have contributed to the historic lows in the number of people receiving regular EI benefits in November 2022,” said the report.

“In November, the number of people receiving regular EI benefits fell in eight provinces. The largest proportional decreases occurred in Quebec (-9.5 per cent; -9,700) and Ontario (-6.7 per cent; -7,400), which together accounted for three-quarters of the monthly decline. Both provinces have seen steady declines in the number of regular EI recipients since July 2022.

“Other notable proportional decreases in regular EI beneficiaries occurred in Alberta (-4.5 per cent; -2,100), Manitoba (-4.0 per cent; -600) and Newfoundland and Labrador (-3.9 per cent; -1,200). At the same time, there was little change in the number of EI beneficiaries in New Brunswick and British Columbia in November.

“The census metropolitan areas (CMAs) of Windsor (-44.3 per cent; -2,900), Québec (-10.9 per cent; -700) and Montréal (-10.8 per cent; -3,900), posted the largest proportional decreases in regular EI recipients. Conversely, the number of beneficiaries increased in the CMAs of Kelowna (+16.5 per cent; +300) and Saskatoon (+7.0 per cent; +200).”

(Mario Toneguzzi is Managing Editor of Canada’s Podcast. He has more than 40 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist, and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald, covering sports, crime, politics, health, faith, city and breaking news, and business. He works as well as a freelance writer for several national publications and as a consultant in communications and media relations/training. Mario was named in 2021 as one of the Top 10 Business Journalists in the World by PR News – the only Canadian to make the list)