Labour Force Survey Monthly

Labour Force Survey, April 2024

released May 10, 2024

Prince Edward Island Employment

Unemployment Rate By Province (seasonally adjusted, in percentage)

Month	Can	NL	PE	NS	NB	QC	ON	MB	SK	AB	BC
April 2024	6.1	9.1	6.8	6.1	7.0	5.1	6.8	5.1	5.7	7.0	5.0
March 2024	6.1	10.1	7.4	6.2	7.8	5.0	6.7	5.0	5.4	6.3	5.5
April 2023	5.1	9.8	7.2	6.4	6.4	4.2	5.1	4.9	4.7	5.9	5.1
Year-over-year change (pp)	1.0	-0.7	-0.4	-0.3	0.6	0.9	1.7	0.2	1.0	1.1	-0.1
Monthly change (pp)	0.0	-1.0	-0.6	-0.1	-0.8	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.3	0.7	-0.5

Summary

Statistics Canada’s LFS shows P.E.I.’s seasonally adjusted employment in April totaled 92,600, an increase of 3,800 from one year ago and of 700 from last month. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.8 per cent, down 0.4 percentage points as compared to April 2023 and down 0.6 percentage points from last month. The total labour force totaled 99,400 in April, up 3,700 (3.9 per cent) compared to April 2023 and up 200 (0.2 per cent) compared to March 2024. The participation rate was 66.5 per cent in April, down 0.2 percentage points from March 2024.

The year-over-year increase in employment was due to an increase of 4,800 (6.4 per cent) in full-time employment, while part-time employment fell by 1,000 (-7.1 per cent).¹ Full-time employment totaled 79,600 in April, while part-time employment was 13,000. The services sector saw an increase of 2,300 as compared to April 2023, while the goods-producing sector increased by 1,500 over the same period (see table below for year-over-year employment gains and losses by industry), to total 69,800 and 22,800 respectively.

Employment gains (+)/ losses (-) between April 2023 and April 2024 occurred in the following sectors on Prince Edward Island¹:

Goods-producing sector	1,500		Service-providing sector	2,300
Agriculture	300		Trade (Retail/Wholesale):	600
Other Primary Industries	700		Transport & Warehousing:	1,600
Manufacturing	-500		Finance, Insurance, Real Estate:	500
Construction	700		Business Services:	-200
Utilities	100		Professional, Scientific and Technical:	800
			Educational Services:	0
			Health & Social Services:	100
			Public Administration:	-300
			Information, Culture and Recreation:	200
			Accommodation & Food services:	0
			Other Services:	-800

The number of unemployed persons in April on Prince Edward Island was 6,800, down 500 from one month ago and down 100 as compared to April 2023. Long-term unemployment—the number of people who had been continuously unemployed for 27 weeks or more—was 700 in April, down from 800 in March. Expressed as a proportion of the total labour force, long-term unemployment was 0.7 per cent in April, down from 0.8 per cent in March.

PEI Unemployment Rate (Seasonally Adjusted)

According to the Labour Force Survey, year-over-year growth in PEI’s population aged 15 years and older has been at 3.0 per cent or higher since February 2022. The employment rate—the proportion of the population aged 15 years and older who are employed—can help assess whether employment growth is keeping pace with population growth. In April, PEI’s employment rate was 62.0 per cent, up 0.2 percentage points from March and unchanged from April 2023. This indicates that growth in employment has kept pace with the growth in population aged 15 years and over since April 2023. This reversed a trend of three months of decline in the employment rate.

The three-month moving average unemployment rate used by the Employment Insurance program for the Charlottetown region was 5.3 per cent in April, up from 5.2 per cent in March. The minimum draw period and the hours needed to qualify remain at 14 weeks and 700 hours for this region. The rate in the PEI region in April was 9.7 per cent, down from 10.2 per cent in March. The minimum draw period increases from 21 to 20 weeks and the hours needed to qualify increases from 525 to 560 hours for this region. For more information, please refer to Employment Insurance (EI) - Canada.ca.

NATIONAL

Nationally, employment increased by 0.4 per cent in April 2024 as compared to March and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.1 per cent. At the industry level, employment in the goods-producing sector fell by 10,400 (-0.3 per cent), while employment in the services-producing sector increased by 100,700 (0.6 per cent). Goods sector employment losses were led by construction and agriculture. Provincially, seasonally adjusted employment in April increased in all provinces except Nova Scotia.

National average hourly wages for employees rose 4.7 per cent ($1.57) on a year-over-year basis in April. By province, year-over-year wage growth was highest in March in Nova Scotia (7.3 per cent; $2.10), British Columbia (6.5 per cent; $2.21), Prince Edward Island (6.4 per cent; $1.78), and Manitoba (5.7 per cent; $1.66). Saskatchewan saw the lowest year-over-year increase in the average hourly wage at 3.1 per cent or $0.99.

Unadjusted for seasonality, the national three-month moving average unemployment rate in April was 6.3 per cent. The rate for population groups designated as visible minorities was 8.2 per cent. Visible minority groups for which the rate was higher than the average were Black Canadians at 12.5 per cent, Arab Canadians at 9.5 per cent, West Asian Canadians at 9.5 per cent, and Latin American Canadians at 8.9 per cent.

Canada Employment

 

¹ Components may not sum to total due to rounding

Notes:
1.    The LFS estimates for April are for the week of April 14 to 20, 2024.
2.    The LFS estimates are based on a sample and are therefore subject to sampling variability. For more information, see the Statistics Canada publication "Interpreting Monthly Changes in Employment from the Labour Force Survey."
3.    The next release of the LFS will be on June 7, 2024.

Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey Estimates, released May 10, 2024.

For more information and links to tables, refer to the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey release for April2024.

Related downloads for this release:

Monthly Labour Force Survey report - PDF (100KB)