Canadan and Ontario July 2016 Employment Numbers. Ugh. Ontario Loses 20,400 Full-Time Jobs in 2016

Employment numbers came out yesterday for Canada and the provinces and for Canada and Ontario especially, the numbers aren't great.

The headline number is that Canada lost 31,900 jobs (seasonally adjusted) in July, while Ontario lost 36,100 jobs. So effective the rest of country actually gained 4,200 jobs. So not good for Ontario while not that bad for the rest of the country. Canada's full-time jobs numbers decreased by 64,300 over the first six months of 2016, while the total number of jobs increased by 37,800 on increased part-time jobs.

For Ontario, over the first half of the year, the province only gained 500 jobs, which is way less than what is required to keep up with population growth. Strangely, Ontario's minister of economic development, Brad Duguid is quoted in a CBC article as saying " Obviously, we would have rather seen an increase in jobs in July, but the overall trends in Ontario continue to remain very, very positive"

More disturbingly, Ontario has lost 20,400 full-time jobs over the first half of 2016. That is with the province showing strong GDP growth in the first quarter of 2016 of 3.0% annualized. I have a feeling that the second quarter GDP number for Ontario will be lower than 3.0%. The lower dollar doesn't seem to be helping Ontario that much, which could well mean an even lower dollar.

Another bad thing for Ontario is that the participation rate cratered from 60.8% to 60.4% in July, while the unemployment rate remained unchanged from 6.4%. This is an example of looking beyond the employment rate.

July could certainly be a blip and with the US beating expectations with 255,000 jobs versus 180,00 jobs, Ontario could pick it up in August. Barring a much lower dollar though, I'm not holding my breath, as what economic strength Ontario has had, is in residential real estate. The US doesn't matter as much anymore.