Unemployment rate rises for second straight month in Canada [Video]

The national unemployment rate ticked up to 6.9 per cent in April as the manufacturing sector started to strain under the weight of tariffs from the United States, Statistics Canada said Friday.

The Canadian economy added 7,400 jobs last month, the agency said, slightly outpacing economist expectations for a gain of 2,500 positions.

But the unemployment rate also rose two tenths of a percentage point in April, topping economists’ call for a jobless rate of 6.8 per cent.

At 6.9 per cent, the unemployment rate is back at its recent high seen in November. Before then, the jobless rate had not hit that level since January 2017, outside the pandemic years.

While the economy did add jobs in April, the rising unemployment rate suggests employers were not hiring as quickly as Canada’s population was growing.

StatCan noted that’s a reversal of earlier this year, when strong employment gains coincided with …