The off-reserve unemployment rate for Saskatchewan’s Aboriginal workers now stands at 12.2%.
That’s down from nearly 16% a year ago.
Today, Statistics Canada released the latest job numbers, which show Saskatchewan has the lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.9%, and it also posted the highest employment rate in March at nearly 550,000 jobs.
Energy and Resources Minister Tim McMillan says there was a lot of good news in the numbers, including the Aboriginal employment sector:
“The first thought I had today was we have 2,200 more Aboriginal off-reserve people working in Saskatchewan than we did a year ago. I think that is a very encouraging number. It has been two months in a row of increased engagement in the workforce.”
McMillan says there is a still a lot of work to be done, but the numbers are moving in the right direction.
He says the government has set targets and is making more training spaces available with the aim of substantially narrowing the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal unemployment in Saskatchewan.