Windsor's jobless rate ticked upwards again in January, but the city no longer has the highest unemployment rate in Canada.
That dubious honour now belongs to Red Deer, Alberta, with a jobless rate of 9.7 per cent, compared to Windsor's 9.1, an increase of two-tenths of a percentage point from December when it was 8.9 per cent.
While the local economy created 1,500 new positions, the rate of job creation didn't keep up with the population. The number of people living in the Windsor Census Metropolitan Area grew by 2,500.
A total of 24,400 people in Windsor are looking for work, an increase of 1,000 from December.
Windsor's participation rate increased to 65.3 per cent in January from 64.8 per cent the previous month.
Nationally, the economy created 76,000 net positions and the employment rate nudged upwards to 61.1 per cent, the third consecutive month of employment increases across the country.
Manufacturing added another 33,000 jobs, while the professional, scientific and technical services sector grew by 22,000.
The unemployment rate across Canada dipped one-tenth of a percentage point to 6.6 per cent.
Ontario's unemployment rate remained virtually unchanged despite adding 39,000 positions. It's still 7.6 per cent.
This month's Labour Market Survey dove into the impact of tariffs on manufacturing, the industry most susceptible to demand from the U.S. and abroad. With the threat of American tariffs and Canada's retaliatory actions looming over the sector, Statistics Canada says 641,000 Canadian jobs, or 39.4 per cent of total manufacturing, are at risk should U.S. President Donald Trump move to impose tariffs at the end of the 30-day reprieve.
The Windsor-Sarnia corridor is one of the regions that could be impacted the most. Locally, 14.8 per cent of employment in the area last month was in auto manufacturing.
The full impact on the manufacturing sector, and in Windsor-Sarnia specifically, will only be known if the U.S. government imposes tariffs.