In the last two months, the COVID-19 pandemic has put more than three million Canadians out of work, and has brought the national unemployment level to its highest level in nearly 40 years.

The latest Labour Force Survey published by Statistics Canada on May 8 shows that two million more Canadians declared they were jobless in April. This is on top of the one million that were out of work at the end of March.

In addition, says Statistics Canada, the number of people who were employed but worked less than half of their usual hours increased by 2.5 million between February and April. This brings the cumulative effect of the COVID-19 economic shutdown to more than 5.5 million, or more than one-quarter of February's employment level.

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has caused the country’s unemployment rate to balloon. The rate rose by 5.2 percentage points in April to 13 percent. That figure is the second-highest on record since Statistics Canada began collecting such data in 1976. Only December 1982—at 13.1 percent—saw a greater proportion of jobless Canadians.

COVID-19 hit every province hard, with double-digit percentage drops recorded in every region of the country. Worst hit was Quebec at nearly 19 percent, or more than 820,000 jobs lost.

While construction-sector employment managed to escape March relatively unscathed by the pandemic, April’s numbers tell a different story. The industry lost 314,000 jobs, or about 21.1 percent of its total employment for the month. Quebec’s construction industry was hardest hit among all provinces, with employment dropping by nearly 39 percent. Ontario’s construction industry lost nearly 94,000 jobs, or about 17 percent of its workforce.

Needless to say, stop-work orders on construction sites in Ontario and Quebec drove the industry to significant job losses in April. While Ontario permitted certain types of essential projects, such as transit and healthcare work, to continue through April, the provincial government kept the industry on near-total lockdown until early May.

Construction across the rest of the country has been allowed to continue during the pandemic, albeit with tight controls in place to ensure site hygiene and promote worker safety.