In February, Canada’s employment remained virtually the same as the nation lost 2.3k jobs, as compared with the moderate decline of 5.7k in January. Canada’s unemployment rate rose slightly to 7.3%. Delving into the details, which are not much encouraging, the nation lost 52k full-time jobs, which were almost countered by an increase of 50k in part-time employment in the month.
Over the past year, full time hiring has been stronger than part-time; however, the trend seems to be shifting as there have been full-time job losses in the past six months. Jobless rate for 25-54 year olds has increased almost by a full percentage point from 5.4% to 6.3% since late 2014. Meanwhile, a moderate increase has been observed in youth employment.
On an industry basis, there were widespread job losses in services sector. The largest losses were observed in health care and social assistance, education, accommodation and food services and “other” services. Meanwhile, goods sector hiring was positive in February, which was mainly due to job gains in construction, manufacturing and agriculture. On an annual basis, employment in construction dropped slightly by 0.4% in February.
Mild job losses in February takes the six-month trend to 5k net new jobs per month, in line with the economy’s slowdown witnessed over the past year. It is evident that job gains in services sector is slowing down as the knock-on effects from the oil price decline flow through to other industries.
In all, the jobs report for February can be characterized as Canadian economy’s new normal. The nation possibly retained more hiring momentum in 2015 than would have been anticipated given the drop in oil prices. The jobless rate of Canada is likely to be stable in the coming few quarters, as weakness in oil-producing provinces is countered by greater strength elsewhere.
“We expect that modest growth in Canada's economy and negligible inflation pressures will keep the overnight rate at its very low level for the foreseeable future”, says TD Economics.
The material has been provided by InstaForex Company – www.instaforex.com