Statistics Canada released the April 2010 employment insurance figures today, which include the following:

• 667,400 people received regular Employment Insurance ("EI") benefits in Canada in April 2010, virtually unchanged from the previous month.
• The number of people receiving regular EI benefits has declined by 161,900 since the peak of 829,300 reached in June 2009, a drop of 19.5%.
• 227,800 initial and renewal claims were received, down slightly from the previous month.
• Claims have generally been declining since their peak in May 2009. Although there was little change in April, the number of claims received has declined by 30.5% since the start of the downward trend in May 2009, with the fastest rate of decrease in Alberta (-41.1%), Ontario (-37.9%), and British Columbia (-23.6%).
• 114 of the 143 large centres had fewer beneficiaries compared with April 2009. This was a marked difference from June 2009 when the number of beneficiaries was at its peak and only two large centres posted year-over-year decreases. Large centres are those with a population of 10,000 or more.
• In BC, 18 of 25 large centres experienced year-over-year declines in the number of beneficiaries, a similar number to March. The fastest declines were observed in Williams Lake, Cranbrook and Campbell River. Victoria posted its first year-over-year decline since the start of the labour market downturn, as the number of beneficiaries edged down by 100 to 3,900. This contrasts with Vancouver, where the number of EI beneficiaries continued to rise, up 1,700 over the 12 month period to 36,700 in April. This increase, however, was much slower than in previous months.