Canada and Ontario February 2016 Job Numbers

Some mediocre numbers for both Canada and Ontario even with the really low Canadian dollar. Jobs overall in Canada were down 2,300 in February and down 8,000 since December. Full-time jobs sank by 51,800 while part-time rose by 49,500. Since October, jobs are down by 18,100.

Ontario after two months of jobs gains, was down by 11,200. Full-time employment was way down, with 48,900 job losses, while part-time jobs were up by 37,700. Since October full-time jobs were up 10,300 in Ontario.

Alberta Actually Has Created More Jobs Per Capita in 2015 Than Ontario

I recently made a post about the September 2015 jobs numbers, mainly emphasizing that for Ontario they weren't good, either for the month or year to date. I compared the numbers for Ontario and Alberta.

However looking again at the year to date numbers, 23,000 jobs created in Ontario versus 15,000 in Alberta it occurred to me that while the Ontario ones were higher, on a per capita basis, they probably weren't. And sure enough dividing by the Statscan population numbers for Ontario and Alberta (13,792,052 and 4,196,457 for the third quarter respectively), Ontario created 0.00166763 jobs per capita in 2015 so far versus 0.0035744 in Alberta.

So the narrative that Alberta is totally in the tank economically while Ontario isn't doesn't seem to be particularly true at least in job creation terms. 

2015 Canada Jobs Numbers

Employment was down in Canada in June by 6,400 jobs after a big gain of 59,000 jobs in May. Weirdly there was a big gain in June of full-time jobs, going up 64,800 while part-time jobs declined by 71,200 jobs. I'm not sure what's up with that.

Since January, employment is up by 95,900 jobs. There's been a lot of talk of a technical recession in Canada for the first two quarters of 2015. It is certainly possibly since all you need is two quarters in a row of slightly negative growth, although it would be unusual for it to occur while employment has increased somewhat.

I'll take a look at the Ontario and Alberta numbers in a future post.

Alberta April 2015 Employment Numbers

I already looked at the employment numbers for Ontario earlier today so I thought I would look at the Alberta numbers as well.

Employment actually rose by 12.5 thousand in April, however since December it is only up by 13.7 thousand.

Full time employment was down by 7.6 thousand in April versus an increase of 21 thousand part-time jobs. More worryingly, full-time employment is down by 22.8 thousand since December.

The working age population is up by 21.3 thousand since December.

The full effect of lower oil prices haven't really been seen yet and may take more time to emerge. Compared to Ontario however, Alberta isn't really doing that bad.

Canadian April 2015 Jobs Numbers: Down, Ontario Unchanged

Statscan just released the jobs number for April with a loss of around 20,000. That follows a gain of around 30,000 in March. Jobs were only up 8 thousand over three months, which is a pretty weak three months of job growth.

Full-time employment was up 46,900 jobs versus a big loss for part-time jobs of 66,500 thousand.

The US job growth for April was 223,000 which is considerably better than Canada's performance for the month.

First quarter GDP growth looks to be weak in Canada, from these jobs numbers, GDP growth has a weak start in the second quarter of 2015 as well.

I'll do a separate Ontario post later today.

March 2015 Canada Jobs Numbers Out, 28,700 Gained

Statscan just released the March 2015 jobs numbers with 28,700 new jobs. Earlier I predicted 20,000 new jobs so I wasn't off by much. That's up from the 1000 job loss for the country in February and arguably better than the 126,000 jobs the US gained in March.

According to the Statscan summary here, Saskatchewan and Manitoba gained jobs while the other provinces stayed roughly the same. Which seems a little strange, as one would expect some problems for Alberta and Saskatchewan has oil influence as well.

The summary also notes:

"In March, employment was also little changed in both Quebec and Ontario. In Quebec, year-over-year growth was 0.8%, with all of the gains in the first two months of 2015. In Ontario, employment edged up 0.5% compared with 12 months earlier."

Considering the Ontario population is growing around 1% a year, 0.5% isn't particularly impressive. Quebec's number is just weird as I'm not sure what's special about January and February this year for that province.

I'll have a closer look at the Ontario numbers in the next couple of days.

US Jobs Numbers Poor for March 2015; Effects on Ontario

The US jobs numbers for March came out on Friday (Canada's numbers won't come out until next Friday and not due to the holiday; those should be interesting). At only 126,000 it was a really weak number and the weakest number for about a year. Certainly bad weather in the Northeast could be blamed for a bad February number, but I don't think there are too many weather effects for March.

Adding to March's weak numbers, the January and February numbers were reduced by 69,000 jobs meaning the overall first quarter for the US isn't looking good. The Atlanta fed has a prediction that the growth for US GDP will be zero in the first quarter.

So what's this mean for Ontario? Surly Hamiltonian has been annoyed by the Canadian media meme that with the low dollar and low oil prices, suddenly Ontario is going to kick ass after sucking economically (by GDP measures) since basically the Harris years. Even Kathleen Wynne has been pumping that story. The problem is that there's not a lot of evidence of this new economic strength lately. To be fair, the second and third quarters of 2014 were strong for Ontario (4.0% and 3.2% annualized respectively), however that was after a really weak first quarter GDP number (0.6%) in 2014. The fourth quarter number hasn't been announced yet, but I don't think it will be as strong as the second and third quarter numbers.

What about this first quarter that just finished? A lot of media had been claiming that with strong US growth that should spill over into Ontario. However with first quarter growth in the US weak that obviously is going to have an effect on Ontario and one can't argue that there is 4.0% growth in the US anymore. Plus there is the real possibility that the US could be weak all the rest of 2015 with the knock on effects in Ontario.

Of course one could argue that even with weak US growth, with the dollar down so much versus the American dollar, that Ontario should do well. However all the manufacturing numbers I've seen haven't been particularly good lately. Ontario doesn't make as many cars as we used to and there's not a lot of evidence that that is suddenly going to change because of the dollar (the Mexican peso hasn't been doing so hot lately either, plus autoworker salaries are a lot less in Puebla than in Oshawa). With the low dollar, less Ontarians will go shopping across the border or go on foreign holidays so there should be some boost to GDP there as more money is kept in the province.

Surly Hamiltonian has argued that Ontario is basically a low wage service sector economy now with a very strong housing component, with little productivity growth and what GDP growth there is is basically from population growth of around 1.1% per year mainly fueled by immigration. So one shouldn't really expect much in the way of GDP growth in this era. No matter how badly Alberta is doing. 

2014 Ontario GDP Growth, Second and Third Quarters

I've been meaning to blog about Ontario's second and third quarter GDP growth. The third quarter 2014 numbers were released in January at the Ontario's Finance ministry's site here. 

Third quarter GDP was actually quite good:

"Ontario’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased 1.0% (4.0% annualized) in the third quarter of 2014, following a 0.8% (3.2% annualized) advance in the second quarter. The strong third-quarter gain was led by higher household and business spending, along with robust export growth."

Note that the first quarter number was considerably less:

"Real GDP grew by 0.1 per cent (0.6 per cent annualized) in the first quarter of 2014." 

So with the three together, that's approximately 2.6% which is impressive by recent Ontario standards of GDP growth. So with any decent growth in the fourth quarter the 2014 GDP number should be over 2%. That's not particularly impressive, but compared to the string of 2% GDP growth numbers the province has been posting the past couple of years, that's something.

However the fourth quarter numbers don't look like they are shaping up that great as made clear in this Financial Post article titled "Canada’s slumping GDP reveals troubles in just about every sector"

From the article it isn't just oil:

"Friday’s GDP report made crystal clear how grimly Canada’s economy — one that contracted 0.2% in November – had been quietly tanking, which contributed to the Bank of Canada’s surprise move last week when it cut its prime setting rate.

While the bleak oil picture was fully developing, the thinking was that Canadians shouldn’t worry about the economy, manufacturing would carry the standard. However, manufacturing output, which accounts for 10.5% of GDP, fell even further than the energy sector, declining 1.9%, even though the Canadian dollar had already begun sliding, according to Statistics Canada."

So if manufacturing is tanking even more than oil, that can't be good for Ontario's fourth quarter of 2014 GDP number. Other industries crucial to Ontario also aren't doing well:

"Concurrently, wholesale trade slumped 0.6% in November, a second consecutive decline following a decrease of 0.2% in October, coupled with a surprising drop in output of 0.4% in the finance and insurance sector, which had previously risen for five consecutive months."

Certainly the Canadian dollar tanking versus the US dollar can help manufacturing, but it takes time to adjust. The fourth quarter GDP number should be interesting to Ontario and considering that a small number of jobs were actually lost in November and December in Ontario, there's not a lot of good signs. Could the fourth quarter numbers even be negative?

The first quarter number for 2015 isn't looking great either. We'll know more when the January employment numbers come out.


 

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.

Canada's November 2014 Jobs Numbers Out, 10,700 Jobs Lost Versus US 321,000 Gained

The Globe and Mail has a good summary article here on the November unemployment numbers. Canada lost 10,700 jobs after gains in back to back months. For comparison purposes, the US gained a healthy 321,000 jobs in November.

I'm going to do a more in depth post on Ontario's numbers, however from the article Ontario apparently lost jobs last month, compared to a big gain last month.

The breakdown in the composition of the jobs numbers was interesting:

"The private sector cut 45,600 positions last month, while the public sector added 22,600. Self-employment grew by 12,300."

That's not particularly great news and I would love to see the Ontario breakdown. A lot of commentators have claimed that Ontario should benefit from a stronger US economy, however with out auto sector being decimated over the past decade I'm not sure Ontario is as linked to the US economy as it once was or perhaps more precisely how quickly Ontario benefits from a stronger US economy.

A lower Canadian dollar certainly benefits the province, if only because imports from the US both for the consumer and the business sector will decline and go instead to local sources. Hopefully exports will respond too, but Ontario's strongest business seems to be real estate and we can't export that.

Canada Has Decent Job Creation Numbers for September

Somewhat surprising, although the US stock market was at record highs during September (which obviously isn't the case now) and the dollar was low versus the US dollar.

For Canada overall, going from 17,851,400 employed in August to 17,925,500 in September, an increase of 74,100 jobs which is quite good. Going against the trend of late, increase came primarily from full-time employment which increased by 69,300 jobs versus an increase of around 5,000 jobs for part-time. This comes after all jobs decreased by 11,000 jobs in Canada in August.

One wonders however with the upheaval in the stock market this month and lower oil prices what that means for employment in the coming months.

July 2014 Canadian Jobs Numbers Revised Upward

So the previously reports July 2014 jobs numbers weren't as bad as previously declared by Statscan with 42,000 jobs gained rather than 200 in their revision released today.

However, the report was still mediocre overall despite the overall job number gain. The number of part-time job numbers stayed at 60,000 created, but the full-time job losses were reduced from 60,000 to 18,000. So full-time jobs still lost, although we created a bucket full of part-time jobs. Is Canada becoming a nation of part-time jobs? It would seem so, although perhaps it is more that places like Ontario are awash in part-time jobs and week on full-time jobs.

Rarely does Canadian economic news make doomster site Zero Hedge, but this revision did. From Zero Hedge's post:

• Self employment fell 37K in July from 23.4K in prior month; self employment was originally reported as -29.2K

In other words, Canada mysterioualy had a swing of over 67K self-employed jobs in the month. Congratulations.

And so on. The bottom line: it is increasingly becoming the case that "unpleasant" official economic numbers are released, they show ugly "recessionary" data, and are subsequently revised much higher to stem the public outcry as analysts scream "bloody recession." 

The fact the shift was in self employment is pretty shady. Someone declaring themselves self-employed and full-time self-employed isn't economically the same thing as getting a full-time job with an existing firm. Anyways, it will be interesting to see how GDP growth for Ontario and Canada correlates with the overall employment numbers, especially the shift to part-time from full-time employment.

Canada's July 2014 Employment Numbers Honk

Here's a Globe and Mail article with a short run down of July's employment numbers from Statscan. Noteworthy quotes:

"Statistics Canada’s monthly tally of hiring and firing produced a net gain of 200 positions last month, as a 60,000 increase in part-time jobs marginally outweighed a 59,700 plunge in full-time positions."

"The consensus estimate of economists on Bay Street and Wall Street was for an increase in total employment of 20,000. Canada’s unemployment rate dropped to 7 per cent from 7.1 per cent, but only because more than 35,000 people gave up looking for work, according to StatsCan’s report, released Friday in Ottawa."

Those are some poor numbers, especially the switch from part-time to full-time jobs. I'll do another post delving deeper into the numbers, especially the Ontario ones. Here's the post I made last month about Ontario's employment numbers. Considering the numbers have been so bad, I can't imagine second and third quarter GDP growth will be good in Ontario and Canada with these job numbers, especially the switch to more part-time positions.

May 2014 Canada and Ontario Employment Numbers

The May 2014 numbers are out from Statscan. On the surface the numbers for Ontario don't seem terrible, but as usual when you dig beneath the surface there's some rot.

Employment went up by 14.8K month to month, which is good considering that the eligible population went up only 9.4K. However full-time jobs went down 30.4K versus a 45.2K gain in part-time jobs. That's not great for a lot of reasons. One important one is that Ontario's income tax system with its various surtaxes is heavily weighted towards those with higher incomes. Part-time workers making 15 to 20 thousand `dollars a year don't pay a lot of Ontario income taxes. Or sales taxes either as more of their purchases will go towards things like food and rent which don't have HST on them.

The full year numbers are also instructive. Eligible population went up 138.8K, however employment only went up 39.4 K. Part-time was up 57.8 K while depressingly full-time employment was down 18.4 K. So over a year, full-time employment declined despite an increase in population. That's not good for government revenue. That's probably not great for government costs either as those not working likely consume more government services.

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.

Canada's Janurary Employment Numbers Are Out, No Recovery for Ontario from Big December Drop

Statscan has the employment numbers out for January, available here. After a big dive of over 40,000 in December, the country as a whole bounced back with 29,000 jobs.

One thing about the numbers that the media didn't pick up on was that Ontario didn't bounce back at all in January. Although the media in general doesn't seem to care a lot about the individual Ontario numbers. In December Ontario lost a massive 39,000 jobs (which would be the equivalent of losing over 900,000 jobs in a month in the entire US). With the ice storm affecting Southern Ontario in December, conceivably some jobs weren't filled and perhaps they would show up in the January numbers. But they didn't:

"Although employment was little changed in Ontario, the unemployment rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 7.5% as fewer people looked for work. On a year-over-year basis, employment in the province rose by 54,000 or 0.8%, the same growth rate as the national average."

That's not really reassuring although at least Ontario didn't lose jobs two months in a row. The number of jobs increasing by 0.8% over a year isn't that fantastic considering the province's population grows at 1% at year currently (from Wikipedia).

Again the February numbers should be interesting to try and discern a trend. For the provincial treasury, low job growth isn't going to help income tax revenue, so the budget should be interesting to say the least. 

May Canadian Employment Numbers: Jobs Up 95,000, Most Private Sector

May employment numbers were excellent with jobs up 95,000 according to Stats Can, which was a little surprising to me. That contrasts with the more mediocre US numbers with only 175,000 jobs created south of the border.

Ontario's number were particularly impressive:

In May, employment in Ontario increased by 51,000, with large gains in full-time work partly offset by losses in part-time work. With this gain, the unemployment rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 7.3%, the lowest since November 2008. Year-over-year growth was 2.0%, higher than the national average of 1.4%.

I wonder if this is partially due to seasonal effects that weren't properly adjusted for. We'll see what happens next month. Still surprisingly good numbers for Ontario.