The head of Workforce Windsor-Essex says "there's a larger story at play" when it comes to the region's unemployment rate, which remains the highest in Canada.
The jobless rate in the Windsor area improved to 8.7 per cent after coming in at 8.8 per cent in October.
Chief Executive Officer of Workforce Windsor-Essex Justin Falconer says the region added 2,700 net new jobs in November, and the working-age population grew by 1,100.
Falconer says the investments in the NextStar Energy electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant and the supply chain around it is causing excitement.
"We're seeing all those early investments start to take shape, and sort of the early hirings gain some momentum," he says. "We've also seen other companies do ribbon cuttings, and the Ontario government announced some funding that occurred down here in late November as well, so just a bunch of stars aligning."
Despite the small improvement in the unemployment rate, Falconer says we're actually bucking an employment trend right now compared to the provincial and federal figures.
Canada's unemployment rate jumped to 6.8 per cent last month, up from 6.5 per cent in October.
Ontario's unemployment rate rose to 7.6 per cent after sitting at 6.8 per cent in October.
Falconer says the there was also good job growth in manufacturing as the area added 3,800 manufacturing jobs in November.
He says we can't get that unemployment figure to drop, but we are moving in the right direction for thousands of people.
"We have record levels of employment in the area, so this month, November, there were 196,300 people working in Windsor, which is the Windsor CMA, the area that gets measured here. That's the most we've ever seen in 20 years of reporting," he says.
Falconer says if we get two more months like November, we'll see the unemployment rate start falling immediately.
"The labour force numbers actually take a three-month moving average. So what happened in November is one-third of the story in terms of how they come to that number. If we see two months of these great employment gains outpacing population growth, we're going to see that number fall dramatically," he says.
The region also saw employment increases in construction, transportation and warehousing, and modest gains in health and social assistance.
