EI claims jump after Liberals cancel CRB

Last month, Statistics Canada updated data on employment insurance claims received by the various Canadian provinces. It now includes data for October 2021.

And what we see is that October had the largest number of EI claims received in Alberta for 2021: 38,910

The next largest number of claims was not far behind: 38,340 in May.

These numbers are seasonally adjusted and include both initial claims and renewal claims.

Alberta wasn’t the only province to see higher numbers either. Every province had higher EI claims received in October 2021 than they did just the month before.

	Sep 2021	Oct 2021	Change
NL	8,630	17,010	8,380
PEI	2,900	4,570	1,670
NS	9,890	17,000	7,110
NB	12,900	19,750	6,850
QC	84,920	96,760	11,840
ON	96,310	108,290	11,980
MB	10,310	11,670	1,360
SK	7,780	9,670	1,890
AB	31,980	38,910	6,930
BC	30,980	35,310	4,330

Not only that, but for every province but Ontario, October 2021 had either the highest number of claims received this year or the second highest.

Even then, October was still Ontario’s 3rd highest month.

None of this should actually be that surprising given that the Trudeau government cancelled the Canada Recovery Benefit that same month, making the employment insurance programme the only option left for people who are still unemployed because of the pandemic.

And there definitely are still people unemployed.

Here, let’s compare 2021’s EI numbers for each province with those of 2020 and 2019.

	2019	2020	2021
NL	8,860	40,870	17,010
PEI	2,570	11,620	4,570
NS	9,310	54,630	17,000
NB	10,670	55,980	19,750
QC	62,640	390,290	96,760
ON	76,220	573,740	108,290
MB	8,570	49,220	11,670
SK	7,630	39,840	9,670
AB	26,230	221,300	38,910
BC	26,070	200,660	35,310

While numbers are significantly down from 2020, during the first year of the pandemic, they’re still up quite a bit over 2019’s numbers.

This table shows you how much higher the 2021 numbers are over the 2019 numbers.

NL	92.0%
PEI	77.8%
NS	82.6%
NB	85.1%
QC	54.5%
ON	42.1%
MB	36.2%
SK	26.7%
AB	48.3%
BC	35.4%

Alberta’s numbers are nearly 50% higher than they were in 2019. Newfoundland and Labrador’s are still nearly double.

And it’s not just simply because there are more claims being submitted. There are literally more people still unemployed. Here, compare the number of people unemployed in each province in October 2019 (before the pandemic), October 2020 (in the middle of the pandemic), and October 2021 (the most recent data.

	Oct 2019	Oct 2020	Oct 2021
NL	29,900	33,500	35,400
PEI	7,300	9,000	8,000
NS	41,400	44,700	42,100
NB	31,800	41,600	36,400
QC	234,000	352,200	255,500
ON	422,800	773,000	567,900
MB	36,700	49,400	37,100
SK	32,100	39,900	37,200
AB	168,200	265,500	185,900
BC	134,200	224,500	160,000
Total	1,138,400	1,833,300	1,365,500

And sure enough, even though unemployment is down compared to 2020, it’s still up from 2019. In fact, there were still over 227,000 more people unemployed in October 2021 than there were in October 2019.

However, what’s really intriguing is when we compare the number of people unemployed with the number of EI claims.

Here’s the number of unemployed people minus the number of EI claims received.

	Oct 2019	Oct 2021
NL	21,040	18,390
PEI	4,730	3,430
NS	32,090	25,100
NB	21,130	16,650
QC	171,360	158,740
ON	346,580	459,610
MB	28,130	25,430
SK	24,470	27,530
AB	141,970	146,990
BC	108,130	124,690

For every province but 3, the number of unemployed workers not receiving EI claims actually decreased, compared to 2 years ago. However, for Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC, the number of unemployed workers not receiving EI claims actually increased.

I wonder what that’s all about.