Canadian employers slashed 82,600 jobs in February, pushing the unemployment rate up to 7.7 per cent, Statistics Canada reported Friday.
According to the report, all of the employment losses in February were full-time positions (110,900), while part-time employment edged up slightly (28,300).
The largest job losses were in Ontario, where employers cut 35,000 positions.
"Since last October, just over half of the country's total employment losses have occurred in Ontario, well beyond the province's 39 per cent share of the total working-age population," Statistics Canada noted.
Alberta was second with 24,000 job cuts in February while Quebec lost 18,000.
Employment decreased the sharpest in the construction industry with more than 43,000 jobs lost in February.
Meanwhile, the hardest hit segment of the labour force was young male workers. In the past four months, employment among men aged 15 to 24 decreased by 104,000.
Economists had been expecting the report to show an overall loss of about 50,000 jobs in February.
"Between all the job losses concentrated on full-time positions and the unemployment rate bouncing up more than expected it was clearly a very weak report from head to toe," Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note.
The losses build on the 129,000 jobs slashed in January. Since last October, Canadian employers have axed 295,000 jobs.
"A U.S. style pace of labour market deterioration has landed on Canada's doorstep," Derek Holt, an economist at Scotia Capital, said in a note.
Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said the government needs to move quicker to help unemployed workers.
"These people had no part in the economic crisis, they're victims," Georgetti told CTV's Canada AM on Friday. "When they need the support from their employment insurance program and they need their government to back them up they ignore them."
The only provinces that did not record job losses were Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Last week, the U.S. Labour Department reported 651,000 jobs were lost south of the border in February.
The cuts pushed the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.1 per cent, which is at its highest level since 1983.
In total, roughly 12.5 million Americans are now unemployed.
