Canadian employment report for January 2018
- Worse report since 2009
- Prior was +64.8K
- Unemployment rate +5.9% vs +5.8% expected
- Participation rate 65.5% vs 65.8% expected
- Full time +49K
- Part time -137K (most on record)
- Wages +3.3% y/y
The full time jobs number is a bit of a caveat but the bigger drop in participation is the only reason unemployment didn't rise to 6.2% and make it a truly horrific jobs report.
On net, this isn't a sign of a sudden slowdown in the Canadian economy. The prior two months included huge job gains and this was merely mean reversion, along with some job cuts due to a jump in the minimum wage.
Still, the three-month average of job gains was +19.3K, which is right in line with the average over the past 4 years.
There will be a lot of talk about the 50.9K job losses in Ontario, where the minimum wage went up and there's some truth to that but there is huge variance and many unexplained swings the Canadian employment data over the past few months.
