B.C.’s unemployment rate rose by nearly two-thirds from March to April, Statistics Canada said Friday, with hundreds of thousands of jobs wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The provincial jobless rate jumped from 7.2 per cent to 11.5 per cent last month, according to the latest Labour Force Survey data.

Addressing the grim numbers late Friday morning, B.C. Finance Minister Carole James confirmed more than 396,500 jobs were lost across the province over the past two months. Just over 264,000 positions were eliminated in April alone.

Those numbers, she said, don’t include the people who were already out of work and stopped looking for a new job.

“Those jobs [numbers] are people. They’re families. They’re businesses,” James said.

Source: CBC May 8th