Week of November 8 to 14. From Tourism HR Canada

In the tourism sector, employment dropped by 34,400, a decline of 2.1% from October. (The seasonally adjusted labour force survey data is showing an increase of 62,000 jobs in November. However, the unadjusted data that we use shows that the Canadian economy lost jobs from October to November. Overall, seasonally unadjusted employment dropped by 19,800 jobs.)

Employment declined in the accommodation (-1.1%), food and beverage services (-3.9%), and recreation and entertainment industries (-8.9%).  Employment gains occurred in the transportation (+8.1%) and travel services industries (+18.3%).

Despite employment losses, the tourism unemployment rate declined to 13.9% from 14.5% in October. This was driven by a decrease in the number of unemployed individuals. The number of unemployed tourism workers dropped from 282,300 in October to 262,700 in November. This indicates that former tourism workers were either finding jobs elsewhere or choosing not to seek employment due to labour market conditions.

Unlike last month, when employment losses were concentrated in Quebec, most provinces saw a loss of tourism employment in November. The greatest loss occurred in Manitoba (-13,900), followed by Quebec (-11,400), and Ontario (-10,200). The decline in Manitoba is particularly notable as it represents a loss of 22.6% of tourism employment compared to October.

In November, the tourism sector employed 410,000 fewer people than it did in February 2020 and 466,000 fewer people than in November 2019. On a year-over-year basis, the travel services and accommodation industries have seen the greatest percentage decrease in employment.