Think-tank also predicts GDP will shrink by 1.7 per cent in 2009
Canadians haven't seen the worst of the unemployment rate yet, according the Conference Board of Canada.
The country's unemployment rate will steadily increase this year and won't peak until the middle of 2010 when it should hit 9.5 per cent, Pedro Antunes, the board's director of national and provincial forecasts, told a conference in Calgary this week.
The economy shrank by about seven per cent in the first quarter of 2009, said Antunes, but the Ottawa-based think-tank predicts the pace of the slowdown will ease throughout the year, resulting in a total contraction for 2009 of 1.7 per cent.
The Conference Board's predictions aren't as dire as those from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which estimates Canadian GDP will shrink by three per cent in 2009 and unemployment will rise to 10.5 per cent in 2010.
