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.

Ontario January 2015 Employment Numbers

I've meant to get around to looking at the latest employment numbers for Ontario. Canada added a decent 35.4K jobs in January compared to the month before. Ontario not so much.

Ontario added a meager 1300 jobs in January, although that was an improvement over the last two months where Ontario actually lost jobs. That means over the last three months Ontario actually lost 43.4 thousand jobs, which makes for a pretty poor three month period. Employment numbers can jump a lot from month to month, but this poor performance over three months has to be taken seriously and detracts from the narrative that Ontario is growing well (and can't be great for the fourth quarter of 2014 GDP number).

The composition of the jobs also changed detrimentally last month. Ontario lost 23.2 thousand full time jobs while gaining 24.4 thousand part-time jobs. This would seem to be continuing a trend where in Ontario the proportion of jobs that are part-time is increasing.

Interestingly, over four months Ontario has actually lost 19.1 thousand full-time jobs, while the working age population increased by 31.9 thousand. Part-time jobs did increase by 24.4 thousand over that period.

One has to think that these low job numbers are going to have an effect on GDP, and income and sales tax revenue for the province. RBC is predicting Ontario will have 3.1% GDP growth in this PDF. I'm skeptical. Considering the low dollar hasn't done a lot to stimulate job growth over the past four months, I don't see a lot of job growth in 2015. That report is also predicting employment growth of 1.4% in 2015.

Update On Hamilton's First Murder Victim of 2015, Nathan Miller

The Spec has some updates on the first murder victim of 2015, 20 year old shooting victim Nathan Miller. Out of the five murders last year, only one was a shooting. The murder took place January 8th, at 28 Madison Avenue which is in ward 3. Ward 3 had two murders last year, along with wards 2 and 4.

From the Spec article, here's a description of the suspects:

"Police are looking for a black man 20 to 25 years old who they say pulled the trigger. He is described as about 6-foot tall with a stocky build. He was wearing a black jacket. 

The other suspects are described as: a black male, 5-feet-1, 18 to 25 years old, with his hair in braids; a blackmale, light skinned, 6-feet-5; a black male, 6-feet-5 with acne on his face and a male short in stature wearing a hoodie, whom police did not describe further."

It is unknown if Toronto resident Nathan Miller is black himself.

Hamilton Has First Murder of 2015

After a rather slow period for Hamilton homicide, the Spec is reporting on the first murder in Hamilton of 2015. An unamed as of yet male victim on Madison avenue close to Cannon and Sanford.

Hamilton had seven murders in 2014 and only one of them involved a gun.

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. 

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. 

First Estimate of January Ontario Electricity Global Adjustment

From the IESO web site, the first estimate of the electricity global adjustment for January and it is rather low at 3.63 cents per kilowatt hour. This is lower than the final 5.00 last year, however the first estimate in 2013 for January was similar at 3.77.

Since the global adjustment is in some sense a relationship between the amount of total power used and the amount of expensive green energy (sun and solar) produced, January isn't often a high month for the global adjustment. It is dark and cold, so electricity is higher from light and space heaters and the like, with not a lot of solar produced and the wind produced is smaller compared to the total power consumed compared to some other months.

November 2013 was the highest month ever for the global adjustment at 8.47 cents per kilowatt hour. Last year the mean January temperature in Hamilton (which isn't a bad proxy for the populous Southern Ontario area) was -3 Celsius versus the usual -6C and since this January has been much colder than last year, I wouldn't be surprised for the final January global adjustment number to stay around the first estimate.