Economics

Employment Destruction on Pace to Blow Away Records in Canada

  • More than 4 million jobs lost in April, economists forecast
  • Unlike past contractions, service sector and women hardest hit
Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg
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A report due Friday will likely show employment in Canada was decimated in April as a nationwide lockdown caused mass lay-offs.

The country probably lost more than 4 million jobs, a fifth of the labor force and far and away the largest decrease in monthly employment on record, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. That follows the record 1-million decline in March, when the Canadian economy was essentially shut down to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.