November's job loss, the biggest month-over-month employment decline since June 1982, was enough to push the national unemployment rate up a tick to 6.3%. Analysts had expected a job loss of 25,000 and an unemployment rate of 6.4%.

Ontario's jobless rate shot up to 7.1% in the month from 6.5% in October as employment in the province fell by 66,000. More than 50,000 of the lost jobs in Canada's biggest province were in the full-time sector.

Nationally, the job losses were almost evenly split between full-time and part-time and between public and private sectors.

The November results mean that for the first 11 months of 2008, total employment in Canada has increased by 133,000 jobs, or 0.8%, compared with 361,000 jobs (+2.2%) in the same period of last year.

After gains earlier in the fall associated with hiring for the October general election, employment in public administration fell by 26,700 in November.

The manufacturing sector took another hit in November, with a net employment drop of 38,300 from the previous month. Manufacturing has now lost 388,000 jobs since its 2002 peak of just over 2.3 million.

Other sectors losing substantial numbers of jobs in November were transportation and warehousing (-26k), educational services (-15.6k) and agriculture (-10.1).

Those losses were partially offset by increases in health care and social assistance (+17.7k), professional, scientific and technical services (+16.3k) and construction (+7.3k).

Quebec managed a gain of 2,500 jobs in November as an increase of 42,000 full-time positions more than offset the loss of 39,500 part-time jobs. Its jobless rate fell a tick from the previous month to 7.1%.

Saskatchewan saw its unemployment rate fall to 3.7% on the creation of 1,300 net new jobs. Alberta retained the lowest jobless rate in the country (3.4%), despite the loss of 3,700 jobs in November.

Nationally, employment fell by 40,000 in November for men aged 25 and over. For youth aged 15-24, employment declined by 19,000 while being little changed for adult women.

By Geoff Matthews, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , edited by Nancy Girgis, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

CEP Newswires - CEP News © 2008. All Rights Reserved. www.economicnews.ca

The Copying, Broadcast, Republication or Redistribution of CEP News Content is Expressly Prohibited Without the Prior Written Consent of CEP News.

A copy of CEP News disclaimer can be found at http://www.economicnews.ca/cepnews/wire/disclaimer.