Some 400,000 Canadians lost their jobs, and our unemployment rate spiked by almost 3 percentage points to its highest level in more than a decade.
Although the labour market is clearly improving, with threequarters of the jobs lost now recovered, too many Canadians who want to work are still out of a job, and many of those still employed are working fewer hours than they would like (see Appendix Chart 1). As painful as our recession was, Canada suffered less than most other advanced economies.