Well the news is out that Canada's GDP growth was only 1.9% in quarter one, below expectations. What does this number mean for Ontario? The last few quarters Ontario has underperformed the Canada number so we could easily be looking for a number between 1 and 1.5%. Considering the population growth rate is 1% (from Wikipedia) for Ontario, that's a per capita GDP growth rate of around zero. That can't be great for provincial revenues. Unfortunately we won't hear the Ontario number until some time in July.
One interesting thing about the Canada number is that its relation to the US number:
The growth matched the economy’s fourth-quarter performance, which was
revised up from 1.8 per cent, as well as first-quarter growth in the
United States.
Curiously Canada was more jobs relatively during that period than the US. Perhaps weaker productivity growth in Canada is leading to more jobs. Or maybe it heralds weak job growth to come in Canada. After the crappy US number released yesterday for May, Canada's number announced next week should be interesting.
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