Comments on February 2015 Canada Employment Numbers

I didn't get a chance to comment on the employment numbers for February that came out last Friday.

Across Canada employment dropped by 1,000 jobs although full-time employment increased by 34,000. Working age population increased by 31,000 month over month.

Manufacturing declined significantly. From the Statscan website:

"The number of people employed in manufacturing fell by 20,000 in February, the first decline since August 2014. The bulk of the losses in February occurred in Ontario and Alberta."

So even with the decline of the Canadian dollar, Ontario manufacturing employment is still declining. That contrasts with the story the media is trying to tell with a rebound of Ontario manufacturing. Certainly a lower dollar can take time to have an effect. One wonders how much Ontario manufacturing goes towards the petroleum sector.

The news on public versus private employment wasn't so great either:

"Between January and February, the number of public sector employees rose by 24,000, while there was little change in the number of private sector employees and the self-employed.
On a year-over-year basis, self-employment grew by 60,000 or 2.2% and the number of public sector employees was up by 43,000 or 1.2%. Over the same period, the number of private sector employees was little changed."

I'll look closer at the Ontario numbers and the other provinces in a subsequent post.

Ontario Electricity: February 2014 Final Global Adjustment, March Initial Estimate

Ontario has continued its string of low global adjustment charges for electricity this winter. February's final global adjustment came in at a rather low of 1.33 cents per kilowatt hour. That was lower than the initial estimate of 2.23 cents, but slightly higher than January's 1.26 cents per kilowatt hour. That's a considerable decrease from last year's 4.81 cents.

Why so low? Probably because as in January it was really cold and people used more electricity, especially at night for supplemental heating (when the wind is blowing and wind turbine production is high). That combined with seasonally low production from expensive wind and solar producers produces a low global adjustment. It is a little strange that the February rate is so low compared to last year, however it has been significantly colder.

March's estimate is again really low in historical terms at 1.1 cents, especially compared to last year's 4.93 cents. Again March has been a lot colder than last year, so energy consumption should be up. April should be interesting as hopefully it will be considerably warmer with lower consumption and more production from solar should lead to a considerable increase in the global adjustment. Last April's was 5.86 cents.

A Closer Look at Ontario's February Employment Numbers from StatsCan

Here's the StatsCan numbers for Ontario comparing February's employment numbers with January's:

                              January    February
Population            11,278.4   11,287.3
Labour force          7,438.2     7,448.7
Employment           6,882.8     6,888.9
Full-time                 5,600.6     5,605.9
Part-time                1,282.2     1,283.0
Unemployment          555.4        559.8
Participation rate        66.0          66.0
Unemployment rate       7.5            7.5
Employment rate         61.0          61.0

Quite minor differences, with no change in the participation rate and the unemployment rate.

Also available is the February 2014 versus February 2013 comparisons percentage comparisons. Employment was up 0.4% year over year, however population was up by 1.2%. That could cause problems for Ontario's budget since expenses like health are based off of population while income tax (and to a lesser extent sales tax) is going to strongly correlate with employment numbers (especially full-time considering how progressive Ontario's provincial income tax is). 

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.

January Ontario Electricity Global Adjustment Finalized, February Estimate Out

The actual global adjustment for January is out on the IESO website and it is really low, both overall and compared to the first estimate. The first estimate was 3.63 cents per kilowatt hour versus the final value of 1.26 cents per kilowatt hour. Likely the reason was high overall power use from people using supplemental electrical heating during the unusually cold January combined with low green energy production (solar is going to be weak in dark January). Interestingly, that's a big difference from the overall record global adjustment for November of 8.47 cents per kilowatt hour and last year's value of 5.00 cents per kilowatt hour.

The February first estimate is out and it is rather low as well at 2.23 cents per kilowatt hour compared to 4.81 in 2013. No doubt that's due to the fact February was quite cold. March looks like it will be starting off cold as well so expect that month's global adjustment to be lower than 2013's value of 4.93.