Not good news from Canada's March 2013 jobs numbers, with 54,500 jobs being shed. There's a good summary in this CTV News article. Notable paragraphs:
"Economists had expected Statistics Canada's March report to even out the above-trend gains of February, but few saw such a massive bleeding, leaving the country with about 26,000 fewer jobs than at the beginning of the year.To make matters worse, all the pay-back was in the full-time category.
The losses in the economically important private sector were mammoth -- with 85,400 workers joining the ranks of the unemployed."
"Regionally, employment fell in six of the 10 provinces, with Ontario and Quebec leading that way, each shedding about 17,000 workers. Even Alberta, one of the country's stronger performers, lost 11,300 jobs and in British Columbia, employment fell by 14,800. Nova Scotia registered the only notable increase relative to its population with a pick-up of 2,900 jobs"
Previously this week I was posting predictions about the first quarter GDP for Canada and Ontario. Data from January and February didn't look bad, but March hasn't been as great. With this weak March jobs number, I'm inclined to predict around 1.5% for both federal and Ontario GDP growth.
I'm also concerned going forward into Q2. We know Q3 and Q4 2013 GDP numbers were quite weak. If this year's Q1 and Q2 numbers are also weak, that's an entire year for weak growth and factoring in population growth, basically zero growth in GDP per capita. That's going to hit federal and Ontario tax revenues.
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