The numbers are out here. An increase of 35,000 is impressive even without an oil crash.
The provincial numbers were interesting:
"Employment in Alberta rose by 14,000 in January, bringing gains over the
past 12 months to 67,000 or 3.0%, the fastest growth rate among the
provinces. Year-over-year employment gains in Alberta were in health
care and social assistance as well as in transportation and warehousing,
while there was a decrease in retail and wholesale trade. Employment in
natural resources was little changed on a year-over-year basis, but it
was down 13,000 (-7.2%) from the most recent peak in September 2014. The unemployment rate in the province was 4.5% in January."
"Employment in the remaining provinces was little changed between December and January."
So even with oil collapsing and the dollar collapsing, employment in Alberta still went up. Certainly employment losses could be coming down the road. By contrast, Ontario lost small amounts of jobs in November and December and not much change for January. So much for Ontario leading the county in GDP growth.
I'll look more closely at the Ontario and Hamilton numbers in another post on the weekend.
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