Canadian Labor Report Better Than Forecast
February 5, 2010
Canada added 43K jobs last month, almost three times more than expected. Over the past three months, jobs climbed at a monthly pace of 33.3K, which is analogous to a rising trend of 258K per month in the U.S. labor market. Two-thirds of the net Canadian employment gains in January came from young workers. In recessions, the youth age bracket is generally one of the hardest hit sectors of the labor market, so this is a very encouraging development that Canada is on the road to labor market, as well as GDP, recovery. Overall employment was only 0.1% lower in January than a year earlier. U.S. employment in December was 3.1% less than a year earlier (January figures in the U.S. get released in an hour). Canada’s jobless rate was revised downward a tenth to 8.4% in December and fell further to a nine-month low of 8.3% in January. Analysts were looking for such to print at 8.5%.
There were some blemishes in the data. Jobs in manufacturing (down 15.7K) and construction (off 0.4K) each declined, and full-time positions only accounted for 1.4K of the overall 43K increase of employment. In fact, full-time jobs were 1.0K lower in January than in November, but such had surged by 146.7K in the previous three months between August and November. Canada’s labor market on the whole is doing better than its U.S. counterpart.
Copyright Larry Greenberg 2010. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
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