Updated: Fri Nov. 06 2009 11:04:50 PM

ctvtoronto.ca

Ontario saw its jobless rate rise marginally in October, but it is now in second-worst place behind Alberta in terms of the proportion of jobs lost since the recession began.

Ontario's unemployment rate moved to 9.3 per cent in October, up from 9.2 per cent in September.

Ontario gained 3,200 full-time jobs but lost 15,200 part-time positions in October, creating a net loss of 12,000 jobs. The province's labour force stayed about the same size.

Alberta had a tough month in October. It lost 15,000 jobs and saw its unemployment rate rise 0.4 percentage points to 7.5 per cent.

"Since October 2008, Alberta's employment has fallen by 3.3 per cent (-68,000), the steepest rate of decline among all provinces," Statistics Canada said Friday in its monthly labour force survey.

Until this survey, Ontario had suffered the worst.

"Since the employment peak 12 months earlier, losses have totalled 206,000 (-3.1 per cent), with most of the decline occurring between October 2008 and May 2009," the agency said of Ontario.

Danielle Zeitsma, a Statistics Canada economist, told ctvtoronto.ca that "in this case, we used a percentage because you need to put the decline into the size of the labour force."

In both provinces, manufacturing has taken a beating.

"Since October 2008, over half of (Ontario's) total employment losses were in manufacturing, well beyond that industry's 13 per cent share of total employment," Statistics Canada wrote.

Zeitsma said Alberta has lost 36,000 manufacturing jobs over the past six months. "It's not the same kind of manufacturing that's been hit in Ontario, but it's been hit none the less."

Ontario's manufacturing sector contracted by 14 per cent over the past 12 months, but Alberta's contracted 23.5 per cent over the same time period, she said.

"In Alberta, you're looking at 117,000 people who were employed in manufacturing in October. You're at 778,000 in Ontario," Zeitsma said.

Nationally, employment in manufacturing has fallen by 11 per cent, or 218,000 jobs, since the employment peak of October 2008.

Ontario lost 126,000 manufacturing jobs since October 2008, or more than half of Canada's total manufacturing job loss, Zeitsma said.

Nationally, private sector jobs have fallen by 4.1 per cent since October 2008, compared to a 1.6 per cent decline in public sector jobs. Self-employment has increased nationally by 3.9 per cent.

Zeitsma said the absolute 12-month figures for Ontario for the total 206,000 lost jobs are:

• private sector - down 167,000
• public sector - down 67,000
• self-employed - up 28,000

Here are the unemployment rates for selected Ontario cities:

• Toronto - 9.6 (9.8)
• Hamilton - 8.4 (9.1)
• Kingston -  6.1 (6.9)
• Kitchener - 9.0 (9.3)
• London - 10.8 (11.2)
• Oshawa - (9.2)
• Ottawa - 5.2 (4.8)
• St. Catharines-Niagara - 10.1 (9.9)
• Windsor, Ont. 13.7 (14.3)

With files from The Canadian Press