Canada’s unemployment rate edged up to 7.% in March as the economy lost jobs for a second month in a row.

Statistics Canada said 13,300 jobs disappeared last month. Economists had been looking for an increase of 15,000 jobs and had expected the unemployment rate would hold steady at 7.4%.

Last month’s uptick in the jobless rate was the first in eight months.

This weaker-than-expected jobs report will bolster the view that the Bank of Canada will cut its key overnight lending rate next Tuesday by a further quarter of a percentage point to 2%.

“The Bank still has a green light to trim rates once more next week, and this soft report will do nothing to change that view,” BMO Nesbitt Burns senior economist Doug Porter said in a morning commentary.

On a positive note, the March report showed that the economy added 61,000 full-time positions in the first quarter.

However, that has been offset by the loss of 81,000 part-time jobs, leaving the economy with 20,000 fewer jobs than at the start of the year.

The weakest employment areas last month included business and building services, educational services, and the information, culture and recreational fields.

Manufacturing employment rose by 7,100 jobs. More than 14,000 jobs were also added in financial services.

The March jobs report came as quite a contrast to the situation in the U.S., where the economy came to life and churned out 308,000 new jobs last month — its highest monthly total in almost four years.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Labor Department reported that the number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since April 13, 2001.

The jobless claims rate was 328,000, better than the 340,000 that economists had been predicting.