Unemployment rate jumps in March

OTTAWA — More than one million people stopped working in March, a drop of 5.3 percent, according to StatCan. Reflecting the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic’s rise in Canada, the country’s employment rate fell 3.3 percentage points to 58.5 percent. That’s the lowest rate since 1997. The unemployment rate increased by 2.2 percentage points to 7.8 percent, the largest one-month increase since comparable data became available in 1976.