The Canadian dollar is struggling to find direction against the US dollar to close out the trading week. Canadian investors are grappling with the March jobs numbers that found the coronavirus pandemic killed more than one million positions, lifting the unemployment rate to just under 8%. Analysts are warning that the slaughter in the labor market will persist and perhaps even amplify.

Statistics Canada reported that Canada shed 1.011 million jobs last month, which is triple the number experts had projected. This is also down from the 30,300 new jobs added in February.

The March unemployment rate came in at 7.8%, up from 5.6% in the previous month. The market had penciled in a reading of 7.2%. The labor force participation rate declined from 65.5% in February to 63.5% last month, while the 12-month average hourly wage rate climbed 6.1%.

Overall, this is the worst jobs report in Canadian history, and the jobless rate spike is the worst in more than 40 years. All the provinces experienced a decline in employment, led by Ontario (-403,000), Quebec (-264,000), British Columbia (-132,000), and Alberta (-117,000). Every industry and all age groups were impacted by COVID-19, particularly the private sector and youth workers (15 to 24).

Because Statistics Canada temporarily altered how it calculates employ so it can attain a better understanding of how much the coronavirus has affected the labor market, analysts are sounding the alarm that the worst is still to come. Plus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed on Wednesday that it could still take a few more months until the nation gradually returns to normal.

In other data, housing starts rose 195,000 in March, beating the median estimate of 180,000. Building permits dropped 7.3% in February, down from the 3.3% gain in January.

The loonie is also getting impacted by the sudden reversal in crude prices. On Thursday, oil surged by as much as 12% on news that OPEC+ was going to cut production levels by as much as 20 million barrels per day (bpd). Without any official announcement from the cartel, oil wiped out all its gains. May West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures tumbled $1.69, or 6.74%, to $23.40 a barrel.

The USD/CAD currency pair edged up 0.04% to 1.4016, from an opening of 1.4013, at 19:11 GMT on Thursday. The EUR/CAD surged 0.66% to 1.5309, from an opening of 1.5211.