A Closer Look At The December 2015 Ontario Employment Numbers

I already looked at the overall federal numbers in the previous post, but I thought I would look more closely at the Ontario numbers from Statscan.

Mirroring the federal numbers, Ontario actually dropped a small amount of jobs in December, 3,500. That comes after a bigger loss in November, so that's two months in a row of negative numbers. Considering the low dollar in that time period, that's not particularly encouraging.

Here's the employment numbers for the past few months (thousands):
August 6,932.4
September 6,957.1
October 6,994.1
November 6,960.2
December 6,956.7

There was a big gain in October, but since August the increase from 6,932.4 to 6,956.7 is only 24K more jobs, or an increase of only 0.35%. That compares to the population increase in that time that was also 0.35%. Pretty much Even Steven. Interestingly for the same period in Alberta, employment gained 1.47%. No massive effects from the drop in oil yet.

The fact that full time jobs increased in that period from 5,596.5 to 5,625.3 (thousands) over that period is a positive, while part-time jobs actually dropped very slightly from 1,335.9 to 1,331.4 (thousands).

It will be interesting to see January's numbers considering the drop in the dollar and the drop in gas prices, which is obviously good for Ontario's economy.