Canada's jobless rate climbs with Alberta suffering most

The sharp fall of oil price has impacted Alberta's job market significantly, with January seeing a climb of unemployment rate above the national unemployment rate for the first time since 1988.

Alberta, the oil-centered province in west Canada, lost 10,000 jobs last month, pushing the unemployment rate in the province to 7.4 percent and bringing the 12-month job loss total to 35,000

The price of oil is trading around 30 U.S. dollars a barrel, down more than 70 percent since mid-2014.

Canada overall saw 5,700 job losses in January, which edged up the national unemployment rate to a two-year high of 7.2 per cent.

Under such circumstances, some economists say the Bank of Canada will likely cut interest rates further.

David Madani, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics, said the oil price shock is now more broadly filtering into employment and he expects the unemployment rate to hit 7.8 percent next year.

Meanwhile, data from Statistics Canada released Friday showed that the country's trade deficit with the world narrowed in December to 585 million Canadian dollars (421 U.S. dollars) from 1.6 billion dollars in November (1.15 billion U.S. dollars).

But last month's trade gain wasn't enough to close Canada's trade deficit, which ballooned to 23.3 billion (16.7 billion U.S. dollars) from a 4.8 billion dollars (3.45 billion U.S. dollars) surplus in 2014. Endit