Canada: Jobs report was disappointing– RBC Economics

Dawn Desjardins, Deputy Chief Economist at RBC Economics, notes that the Canada’s employment dropped by 31,000 in July while 12,800 left labour force; unemployment rate up to 6.9%

Key Quotes

“Job losses totalled 31,200 in June defying expectations for a 10,000 increase. The details of the report were weak with losses of full-time jobs and across the majority of industries. The public sector bore the brunt of the decline while private companies hired 13,600 workers. Good producers shed 4,300 jobs building on the large 46,000 cut in June. Service sector firms also reduced employment in July by 27,000 reversing more than half of the 46,000 workers hired in June. Ten of sixteen industry groups cut employment in July. The bright spots were in manufacturing (+5,600) and health care (+28,300).

The decline in employment was largely due to a 28,000 drop in hiring of youth with other age cohorts seeing little change in July. The labour force contracted and the participation rate edged down to 65.4%. The pace of wage gains decelerated further to 1.8%, sharply below the 3.1% in January through April.

BC was the only province to show an increase in employment and now sits with the country’s lowest unemployment rate at 5.6%. Ontario saw large job losses although the accompanying decline in the labour force saw the unemployment rate hold at a cycle low of 6.4%. In Alberta there were 1,400 jobs cut and 17,600 people joined the labour force pushing the unemployment rate to another cycle high at 8.6%.”