Canada added 25,000 jobs last month, StatsCan says

Canada's economy added 25,000 new jobs in November, Statistics Canada reported Friday.

Despite the slight increase in jobs, the unemployment rate inched up to 5.8 per cent, as more people were looking for work, too. Canada's unemployment rate has ticked up by 0.8 percentage points since April, even as the economy has added jobs.

November's job gains were slightly more than what economists were expecting.

The job gains were mostly of the full-time variety, as the economy added almost 60,000 such positions during the month. But that gain was slightly offset by a loss of more than 34,000 part-time jobs.

By sector, manufacturing added 28,000 jobs and construction added 16,000. On the other side of the ledger, the wholesale and retail trade industry lost 27,000 jobs, while finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing lost 18,000.

Royce Mendes, an economist with Desjardins, called the increase in the number of jobs "middling," especially considering some of the underlying factors.

"With the population … growing by 78,000 and the labour force increasing by 36,000, labour demand didn't keep up with labour supply," he said.