The Canadian economy added more jobs in April than many economists had forecast, pumping out a surprisingly strong 58,300 jobs to push the jobless rate down a notch, to 7.6 per cent.

April's gains bring the year-over-year increase in employment to 283,000, a bump of 1.7 per cent.

Economists had expected a modest gain of 20,000 jobs in April, following a weak March. Instead, they got more than twice that, with almost all the gains in the province of Ontario and in the services sector.

Jimmy Jean, a senior economist with Desjardins Securities, said that while the gains look good for Ontario, there were only about 3,000 jobs added in other provinces over the same time period.

"On the surface, the headline number looks good, but scratching below the surface, it's really concentrated in Ontario and also in the part-time component," Jean told CTV News Channel on Friday morning.

"So there could be some reversal of that in the following months."

Douglas Porter of BMO Capital Markets called the jobs report "pretty encouraging," on the basis that it beat economists' predictions and showed "that the recovery continues to roll forward."

The April job numbers

According to the StatsCan numbers, service industry employment rose by 69,600 in April, while manufacturing jobs fell by 11,300. Part-time work expanded by 41,100 and full-time jobs by 17,200.

Among the services sector, finance, insurance, real estate and leasing saw a gain of 19,000 jobs. Business, building and other support services chipped in with 17,000 new jobs.

The key manufacturing and construction sectors were mostly flat in April, but both industries have seen increases in employment of 3.3 per cent and 2.7 per cent respectively over the past year.

While employment among youths aged 15 to 24 and so-called "core-aged" workers (25 to 54) held steady in April, employment rose among women 55 and over -- up 29,000 in April.

"Compared with 12 months earlier, employment among these women increased by 102,000 or 7.9 per cent, the fastest rate of growth of all demographic groups," Statistics Canada said.

Province-by-province numbers

Ontario saw its jobless rate drop to 7.9 per cent, the lowest since December 2008. The province has seen an increase of 157,000 jobs, or 2.4 per cent, over the past 12 months -- most of them full-time.

Newfoundland too added plenty of jobs, pushing the unemployment rate from 12.4 per cent down to 11.1 per cent, the lowest since comparable records began in 1976.

But six out of 10 provinces experienced an overall drop in employment levels, although all were modest relative to their population.

Here's what happened provincially (previous month in brackets):

• Newfoundland 11.1 (12.4)
• Prince Edward Island 11.2 (11.2)
• Nova Scotia 9.2 (9.0)
• New Brunswick 10.0 (9.6)
• Quebec 7.8 (7.7)
• Ontario 7.9 (8.1)
• Manitoba 5.2 (5.5)
• Saskatchewan 5.0 (5.2)
• Alberta 5.9 (5.7)
• British Columbia 7.9 (8.1)

With files from The Canadian Press