Canada Lost 1,011,000 Jobs in March, Unemployment Rate 7.8 Percent: StatCan

Signage mark the Statistics Canada offiices in Ottawa on July 21, 2010. Canada's national statistics agency says more than one million Canadians lost their jobs in the month of March, due to fallout from COVID-19. The unemployment rate has also climbed to 7.8 per cent, up 2.2 percentage points since February. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

OTTAWA—Statistics Canada reports the economy lost 1,011,000 jobs in March as the COVID-19 crisis began to take hold, which lifts the unemployment rate up to 7.8 percent.

The 2.2 percent increase in the national unemployment rate marks the worst single-month change over the last 40-plus years of comparable data and brings the rate to a level not seen since October 2010.