- Prior +15.0K
- Unemployment rate 5.8% vs. 5.8% expected — highest since January 2022
- Prior unemployment 5.7%.
- Full-time employment +59.6K vs -3.3K last month
- part-time employment -34.7K vs. +20.8k last month.
- Participation rate 65.6% vs 65.6% last month.
- Average hourly wages permanent employees 5.0% vs 5.0% y/ last month
This is another good jobs report and will give the Bank of Canada some pause next week if they’re thinking about shifting to a neutral stance and make the same mistake they made in early 2023. The jobs are all full-time which is particularly impressive but much of what’s happening in Canada is due to population growth. As StatsCan noted, “growth in the population continued to outpace employment growth.”
Employment increased in manufacturing (+28,000) and construction (+16,000). There were declines in wholesale and retail trade (-27,000) and finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing (-18,000).
USD/CAD was trading at 1.3546 ahead of the release and has fallen to 1.3536 since.