Canada had almost 1.6 million people unemployed in August as the economy lost thousands of jobs and its unemployment rate scaled over a nine-year peak barring the pandemic years, data showed on Friday.

Its unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points in August to 7.1%, a level last seen in May 2016 if the COVID-19 years of 2020 and 2021 were excluded, Statscan said

The economy shed 65,500 jobs in August, largely in part-time work, it said, and added that this was fuelled not only by lower hiring but also some layoffs with the layoff rate rising to 1% in August, compared with 0.9% observed 12 months earlier.

The number of job losses in August was the worst level since January 2022.

Canada’s economy has shown resilience in the last few months in the face of U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and cars but the labour data from Statistics Canada showed that the pass through effects of tariffs had started to impact other sectors.