Few things demonstrate just how badly the Canadian economy is performing lately than our nation's ballooning unemployment rate, which has just passed a disheartening new milestone. This growing issue has been especially pronounced in Ontario, which saw 26,000 more people lose their employment last month — the most job losses of any province. (On the plus side, this is slightly better than the nine per cent rate we saw in July, albeit worse than the 8.8 per cent rate we had in January.) Canada's overall ratio of unemployed persons to employed persons worsened by 0.2 per cent from July to August, with 7.1 per cent of the population now idle. The hardest-hit industries, per the report, are professional, scientific and technical services, transportation and warehousing, and manufacturing, while more people were hired in construction.