Canada's Unemployment Rate For decades prior to the 1981-82 recession, the national unemployment rates of Canada and the United States had been nearly identical. Since then, a persistent "unemployment rate gap" has emerged. Throughout most of the 1980s, Canada's unemployment rate has consistently been about 2 percentage points higher than in the United States. The gap developed in spite of very similar economic performances across the two countries: the growth rate of real per capita incomes has been virtually identical since 1976. However, now, well into the 90s, the gap has widened much more significantly. In the last five years, the United States avera