Information released Friday morning revealed that Canada's economy added 12,000 jobs last month, but the unemployment rate increased slightly to 7.1% because more people were also looking for work.
Most of the jobs were part-time, the agency said, with 74,000 new part-time positions created during the month, offset by a loss of 62,000 full-time jobs. The dropoff in full-time jobs was the largest monthly decline since October 2011.
The jobless rate ticked up to 7.1% In the same period last year, the rate was 6.9%. But the overall jobs number was slightly better than economists had been expecting.
The average forecast in a survey of 20 economists polled by Bloomberg was for Canada to have created between 8,000 and 10,000 jobs during the month.
New jobs weren't spread evenly across the country, however.
Jobs were added in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island. Employment fell in Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador.
All in all, Canada's economy has now added 161,000 jobs in the past 12 months, an increase of 0.9%, according to the nation's number-crunchers.
