国际英语新闻：Canada's unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent in January

OTTAWA, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) - The Labour Force Survey released by Statistics Canada on Friday showed that Canada's unemployment rate was down 0.1 percentage points to 8.3 percent in January, with jobs increased by 43,000.

This was the fourth employment gain in six months. However, employment still remained 280,000 below the level of October 2008. Employment gains in January were driven by women aged 25 to 54 and youths. This was the first notable increase for youths since the start of the employment downturn in the fall of 2008.

The increase was among private sector employees, with the largest ones occurred in business, building and other support services, and retail and wholesale trade. But the losses in professional, scientific, and technical services, as well as agriculture, partially offset the gains.

Over the last six months, the number of private and public sector employees has been rising while self-employment has been little changed.