Canada February 2014 Employment Numbers Out, Jobs Down Slightly

Canada's employment numbers are out for February and it is a little bit of a surprise with the country losing 7,000 jobs. Over at the StatsCan web page on the numbers, there is a few interesting things.

No mention of Ontario's numbers so I'm assuming that they didn't really change. They didn't change much in January either after a big drop in December. Weather related? Who knows. Considering that Ontario's population is growing around 1% a year, that's a pretty poor three months.

Some interesting numbers from Alberta:
"Employment in Alberta rose by 19,000 in February, pushing the unemployment rate down 0.3 percentage points to 4.3%. On a year-over-year basis, employment in this province grew by 3.8% or 82,000, accounting for the lion's share of the national growth."

So over the past year, what growth there has been in in jobs has been in Alberta.

Public sector jobs were down:

"In February, the number of public sector employees fell by 51,000, with declines in health care and social assistance, educational services as well as transportation and warehousing. On a year-over-year basis, there was little change in the public sector and in self-employment, while the number of private sector employees increased by 129,000 (+1.1%)."

Seems weird for public sector jobs to be down that much and Ontario's numbers to be unchanged unless Ontario has some commensurate growth in private sector jobs.

These month to month numbers are quite volatile so keep that in mind.