Daily Jobless Claims Surge More Than 50% in Canada on Lockdowns
- Applications said to jump to 1.55 million as businesses shut
- Trudeau expands wage subsidy to help keep workers on payrolls
Workers board up a store in Vancouver on March 27.
Photographer: Taehoon Kim/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Jobless claims are accelerating in Canada as the coronavirus pandemic forces more and more businesses to shut, leading Prime Minster Justin Trudeau to expand a program to help keep workers on payrolls.
In the 10 days between March 16 and March 25, some 1.55 million Canadians applied for jobless benefits, according to a senior government official with knowledge of the matter. That means on a daily basis, claims averaged about 207,000 in the last three days of the data, compared with about 133,000 in the seven days before that.