OTTAWA, April 8 (Reuters) - Canada's economy likely suffered its fifth straight month of heavy job losses in March, which will jack up the unemployment rate to the highest in seven years.
The median forecast of analysts surveyed by Reuters was for 55,000 job losses last month, which would bring total job losses since November to 350,000. That would be the worst back-to-back decline in employment since the 1982 recession although overall job losses were bigger over the course of the downturn of the early 1990s.
Analysts expect a March unemployment rate of 8 percent, up from 7.7 percent in February.
Canada's economy is now expected to have shrunk at its fastest pace on record in the first quarter, surpassing the annualized 5.9 percent decline in the first quarter of 1991. Figures are due in June.Continued...
Weakening global demand for goods has caused huge job losses in the manufacturing sector for some time.
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