848,000 thousand unemployed Canadians made contributions to the country’s Employment Insurance program in 2015.
Emmanuelle Bourbeau with Stats Canada says almost 1/8th of that total came from BC. “The number of unemployed people who contributed to the EI program in 2015 was 99,000 and that’s an increase of 30.7% compared with 2014.”
However, BC ranked fairly low in another category according to Bourbeau. “British Columbia has the second lowest share of recent mothers with insurable employment and it was 69.3% and the share of insured mothers receiving maternity leave or parental benefit was 89.9%.”
The provincial eligibility rate for receiving benefits last year was 75.2%.
Of Canada’s 848,00 thousand contributors, 81.8% of them had a valid job separation in 2015.
That’s a spike of 18.5% over 2014.
In BC, 86,000 had a valid job separation in 2015 which is a spike of 44.5% compared to 2014.