The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition that Canada's labour market unexpectedly lost jobs and the unemployment rate jumped to the highest level in more than two years, signalling greater slack in the economy that will test the central bank's patient position on rate cuts. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that the country shed 2,200 jobs in March and the unemployment rate rose 0.3 percentage point to 6.1 per cent, Statistics Canada reported Friday in Ottawa. The figures missed expectations for a gain of 25,000 positions and a jobless rate of 5.9 per cent, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. This is the first job loss since July and the highest unemployment rate since January, 2022. Outside of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada has not had a jobless rate above 6 per cent since 2017. U.S. labour data released at the same time showed the country added 303,000 jobs in March. The Canadian data highlight growing weakness in the job market that will likely add to evidence that the Bank of Canada may need to soon start considering interest rate cuts. "The cracks that had been emerging within the Canadian labour market suddenly got a lot wider," said CIBC economist Andrew Grantham in a report.