CALGARY — The Conference Board of Canada has laid out a grim outlook for employment in 2009 and 2010.
The board's director of national and provincial forecasts says unemployment numbers will steadily rise this year at peak at 9.5 per cent in the middle of 2010.
Pedro Antunes says he's predicting 340,000 lost jobs in Canada in 2009.
The Ottawa-based economic think-tank also says the Canadian economy will shrink more this year than it originally estimated.
The Conference Board now says Canada's gross domestic product will contract by 1.7 per cent in 2009.
It had previously called for the Canadian economy to shrink by half a percentage point in 2009.