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Employment Insurance
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In October, 486,200 Canadians received regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits, up 3,500, or 0.7%, from September, after seasonal adjustment.
The number of Canadians receiving regular EI benefits rose by 24,200 between October 2007 and October 2008, a 6.9% increase. The number of men receiving benefits increased 9.0%, while the number of women receiving benefits rose 4.2%.
Ontario, British Columbia and Yukon posted the largest year-over-year increases in regular EI beneficiaries, up 18.4%, 18.2% and 17.8% respectively. Three provinces showed decreases: Saskatchewan (-4.8%), Quebec (-2.4%) and New Brunswick (-0.3%).
In the majority of census metropolitan areas, the number of regular beneficiaries increased between October 2007 and October 2008, with the largest year-over-year increases occurring in Oshawa (+103.4%) and Windsor (+41.9%).
Note: Employment Insurance Statistics Program data are produced from an administrative data source and may, from time to time, be affected by changes to the Employment Insurance Act or administrative procedures. The number of beneficiaries is a measure of all persons who received Employment Insurance benefits from the 12th to the 18th of October. This coincides with the reference week of the Labour Force Survey for the month of October. The regular benefit payments figure measures the total of all monies paid to individuals during the month. Month-to-month comparisons are based on seasonally adjusted data, which removes the effects of seasonal variations.
Available on CANSIM: tables 276-0001 to 276-0006, 276-0009, 276-0011, 276-0015 and 276-0016.
Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 2604.
Data on Employment Insurance for November will be released on January 27, 2009.
For more information, or to order data, contact Client Services (toll-free 1-866-873-8788; 613-951-4090; labour@statcan.gc.ca). To enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Gilles Groleau (613-951-4091), Labour Statistics Division.
Table 1
Employment Insurance statistics
Table 2
Number of beneficiaries receiving regular benefits
