Job Loss Numbers — What Happened in March and What Would a ‘Proportional’ Recession Look Like?

3 min readMay 6, 2020

TL;DR version: Economists are predicting an employment decline of 4 million Canadians in the April Labour Force Survey. This would represent a 27% drop in employment since February. The pain will not likely be spread proportionally, with women, younger workers, and those without post-secondary completion experiencing more of the decline.

There’s been an idea floating around Twitter that this “she-cession” won’t hold, that industries that employ more women than men were hit first, but the April numbers will show that after the second-wave of job loss, the pains will be spread far more evenly.

I’m skeptical. Here’s why.

First, let’s look at the numbers from March by industry and sex.

Employment Levels by Industry and Sex

The “Drop” represents what percentage of jobs were lost in each industry. So employment in the construction sector fell by 1.2%, while “accommodation and food services” declined by a whopping 23.7%! Keep in mind this only counts people who have lost their jobs — those with reduced hours or still employed but with no hours aren’t counted as losing their jobs.

As I mentioned in my look-ahead to Friday’s data release, Bay Street is predicting an employment decline of 4 million in April, on top of the 1 million in March. That combined 5 million drop represents 27% of all jobs. I don’t even think there was a 2-month period in the Great Depression where we saw that.

If every industry declined by 27%, here’s what the April numbers would look like.

Proportional Job Loss Projection By Industry and Sex

If we hit proportionality by the end of month 2, April’s numbers should show that 56% of the April job loss was experienced by men, and nearly 24% of the job loss comes from goods-producing sectors. And almost no additional job losses in accommodation and food services. So, yeah, I’m skeptical.

I was a curious what the employment drop looked like by age and education level. Here’s the March numbers by age group:

Employment Levels by Age

Workers under the age of 20 have experienced a nearly 27% decline already, so under a proportional scenario they’d experience almost no job loss in April. So, yeah, I’m skeptical.

Proportional Job Projection Loss By Age

Finally, here’s last month’s numbers by education level. Not quite as disproportionate as some of our other charts, but we see that Canadians without post-secondary completions lost jobs at higher rates.