Ontario and Canada 2015 November Jobs Numbers Analysis

I'm finally getting around to looking at the seasonally adjusted employment data for Canada and Ontario for November 2015.

For Canada, overall employment dropped by 35,700 in November, but curiously full-time increased by 36,600. Part-time dropped by 72,300.

For Ontario, overall employment decreased by 6,400 jobs. Similar to the overall Canadian numbers, full-time increased by 5,700 while part-time decreased by 12,000.
Since July overall employment in Ontario has decreased by 14,900 jobs which is interesting in terms of GDP growth. Ontario's GDP growth was weak in the first and second quarter and is supposed to be better in the third quarter, but the jobs numbers haven't really showed it and the fourth quarter jobs numbers aren't looking good. I'm not expecting much from the December numbers which we should get January 8th.

For the year to date, Ontario overall jobs have increased by 45,800 jobs. The employment age population increased over the same period by 115,600 indicating that employment growth has lagged population growth, which isn't going to be good for tax revenues per capita.

Ontario's September 2015 Employment Numbers. Not Good.

So the jobs numbers for September came out from Statscan. For all of Canada, employment went up a mediocre 12,100 jobs. Unfortunately for Ontario, employment went down by a relatively massive 33,800 jobs (oddly Alberta gained 12,300 jobs in September). That follows a smaller loss of 3,900 jobs in August. July's employment numbers were unchanged. So by any measure, that's a pretty stagnant three month period for jobs in Ontario.

One wonders how that will end up showing up in the third quarter GDP numbers. By comparison, for the January, February and March period, jobs went up by 17,100 even though the GDP number was negative for the first quarter. That suggests to me that the third quarter GDP number for Ontario could also be negative (note that the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model is predicting only 1% GDP growth in the third quarter for the US, Ontario's primary export market).

Obviously the monthly and three months numbers, aren't good for Ontario, what about the entire year's? Since the start of the year, Ontario's jobs numbers are up 23,000, which isn't terrible, but certainly not particularly good either. However, Canada's number is 126,600 since the start of the year, so Ontario's portion is way below its share of Canada's population.

There was also some bad news in terms of the composition of the jobs in Ontario in September. Full-time jobs were down by 67,700 compared to an increase of 34,000 part-time jobs. I'm not sure if there's a statistical aberration with the full-time versus part-time numbers or what. Over the full year, the full-time number is much better, a gain of 67,800 jobs versus a loss of 44,800 part-time jobs.

Canada Loses 4,300 Jobs in December Versus US Gain of 252,000

The jobs numbers are out for both countries and Canada actually lost 4,300 jobs after losing 10,700 jobs in November. I'll look at the Ontario numbers in a specific post later. The US in contrast gained 252,000 jobs.

Maybe there's fallout from the price of oil, but with the Canadian dollar cratering versus the US, there doesn't seem to be any immediate job gains.

Ontario Loses 34,000 Jobs in November 2014, Over A Year, Population Growth Outpaces Employment Growth

I already blogged about Canada's overall unemployment today however I hadn't checked the Ontario November numbers in depth, only knowing they had declined. However after looking at the numbers at Statscan, Ontario declined by a relatively large 34,000 jobs, especially compared to the fact Canada itself lost only 10,700 jobs.

Compared with a year ago the province gained 53,000 jobs, an 0.8 % increase. That sounds good, but the labour force population increased by 127,100 over the year, a 1.1% increase so the percentage of employed Ontarians actually decreased. That obviously has negative implications for the Ontario budget, as taxes are generally going to paid by employees while expenditures will be based on the entire population.

The fact that Ontario's labour force population has increased at a 1.1% rate over the past year is interesting in and of it self, because it had been lower recently. Ontario's GDP growth in large part has been a story of population growth rather than GDP growth per capita (i.e. productivity growth).