{"id":598170,"date":"2026-04-12T01:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T01:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/598170\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T01:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T01:36:08","slug":"regions-unemployment-remains-1-9-per-cent-higher-than-national-average","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/598170\/","title":{"rendered":"Region’s unemployment remains 1.9 per cent higher than national average"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waterloo Region is edging to the top of a podium it doesn\u2019t want to be on.<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate<\/a> across Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo remained stagnant in March, but still sits at 8.6 per cent, according to the latest Labour Force Survey.<\/p>\n

That places the tri cities second amongst the 20 largest census metropolitan areas.<\/p>\n

Waterloo Region sits only behind London, which has a jobless rate<\/a> of 9.1 per cent.<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate across the three cities is 0.6 per cent higher than it was in March 2025. <\/p>\n

\"\"Screenshot from the March 2026 Labour Force Survey. (StatCan)<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate for Ontario remained unchanged as well, sitting at 7.6 per cent. But the data shows that southern Ontario is particularly struggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegions of Southern Ontario continued to experience challenging labour market conditions and elevated unemployment rates, in a context that includes ongoing economic uncertainty related to tariffs on exports to the United States,\u201d StatCan said. \u201cAmong Canada\u2019s\u00a020\u00a0largest census metropolitan areas (CMAs<\/a>), the\u00a05\u00a0highest unemployment rates in March were in London (9.1%), Kitchener\u2013Cambridge\u2013Waterloo (8.6%), Windsor (8.5%), Barrie (8.5%) and Toronto (8.1%).\u201d<\/p>\n

These southern Ontario cities are well above the national rate of 6.7 per cent.<\/p>\n

According to the Region of Waterloo website, its key economic sectors include advanced manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, food processing, and tech and digital media. <\/p>\n

The automotive sector has been one of the hardest hit by U.S. tariffs as they continue to face steep duties over a year after President Donald Trump first launched the trade war.<\/p>\n

According to the Labour Force Survey, manufacturing jobs were lost at a rate of 5.1 per cent between March 2025 and 2026 in Ontario.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waterloo Region is edging to the top of a podium it doesn\u2019t want to be on. The unemployment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-598170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}