Windsor's jobless rate grew 0.4 percentage points in February.
Despite adding 2,000 jobs, the city's unemployment rate ticked upwards to 10.7 per cent, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from January.
Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey for February also recorded a 0.9 percentage point increase in the local Labour Participation Rate to 56.9 per cent. While 152,800 people in the labour force had work, another 18,500 did not.
February 2020 was the last month before the pandemic began giving Statistics Canada a good picture of trends over the past year. It said Windsor lost 13,500 jobs since restrictions to control COVID-19 were put in place.
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Ontario's jobless rate fell a full percentage point from January to 9.2 per cent. That is still 4.1 per cent above the rate in March 2020 before restrictions began.
The provincial economy added 100,000 jobs, the largest monthly gain since September.
Nationally, the economy added 259,000 net positions, pushing the unemployment down 1.2 percentage points from the month before to 8.2 per cent, the lowest rate since before the start of the pandemic.
Most of the gains were in retail and trade. Employment in that sector grew by 122,000 positions, 6.1 per cent from January as restrictions in many parts of the country lifted.
The trade-off is that many new jobs across Canada are low-paying, offering $17.50 per hour or less.
More people returned home to work in February too. That metric was up 200,000 last month to 5.2-million Canadians, 3.1-million of which were staying home because of COVID-19.