Canada and Ontario December 2015 Employment Numbers Analysis

Statscan released the December numbers on Friday and they were better than I was expecting (which wasn't much). Canada's seasonal adjusted jobs numbers increased by 22,800 in December. Unfortunately, full-time employment actually decreased by 6,400 jobs, while part-time jobs increased by 29,200 jobs. Year over year, jobs increased by 158,100. Full-time jobs increased by 151,000 versus 7,100 more part-time jobs.

However there does appear to be some caveats. In the Statscan writeup for the month, "In December, the number of self-employed increased by 40,000, while the number of private and public sector employees was little changed." So people could be declaring themselves self-employed out of necessity and there wasn't actually any private sector hiring. 

Ontario had a great December. Jobs increased by 34,900 in December. Full-time jobs increased by a massive 42,200, while part-time jobs decreased by 7,300. Year over year, jobs increased by 80,700.  Full-time jobs increased by 141,600 and part-time jobs actually decreased by 61,800.

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.

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. 

Ontario and Alberta May 2015 Employment Numbers

Ontario had a massive month over month jobs gain in May 2015, with 43,900 more jobs. Full-time employment was up 31,100 while part-time jobs were up 12,700. From January, employment went up 45,400 so the first four months were pretty pathetic in terms of job growth (working age population went up by 35,800 in that period). That will probably show up in the GDP numbers for Ontario, with the first quarter coming in weak, with the second stronger from May onwards. It will be interesting to see whether May is an anomaly or the start of a stronger trend for job growth in Ontario. Potentially after a weak start for the US economy in 2015, strength there could be seeping into Ontario.

For Alberta, employment went down in May by 6,400. Full time actually went up by 20,200 while
part time was down 26,600. So that's somewhat mixed, although certainly the effect of the crash of oil prices is reducing jobs. More concerning is that jobs are down 6,400 from January indicating a very flat employment situation. However considering that oil is down so much, a flat employment situation is actually pretty good. It will be interesting to see what happens going forward through the summer.

Canada's May 2015 Employment Numbers Are Out and They Are Good

Statscan released the Canadian jobs numbers for May and there was a big jump, up 58,900 compared to a loss of 19,700 jobs in April. One could look at this as the weak first quarter of 2015 continued into April, but now job growth has accelerated in May (and possibly the overall economy has accelerated in May as well).

Both full-time and part-time jobs were up, 30,900 and 27,900 respectively, so there's no trading full-time for part-time jobs that was seen earlier in the year.

Over five months, from the start of the year employment is up 102,300 which isn't nearly as impressive (although still not bad). The labour force was up 133,600 in that time span.

All and all it is an impressive jump for May and maybe the start of a positive trend. I'll look at Ontario's and Alberta's numbers on the weekend.

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.

Statscan Canada Job Numbers for January 2015, Up By 35,000

The numbers are out here. An increase of 35,000 is impressive even without an oil crash.

The provincial numbers were interesting:

"Employment in Alberta rose by 14,000 in January, bringing gains over the past 12 months to 67,000 or 3.0%, the fastest growth rate among the provinces. Year-over-year employment gains in Alberta were in health care and social assistance as well as in transportation and warehousing, while there was a decrease in retail and wholesale trade. Employment in natural resources was little changed on a year-over-year basis, but it was down 13,000 (-7.2%) from the most recent peak in September 2014. The unemployment rate in the province was 4.5% in January."

"Employment in the remaining provinces was little changed between December and January."

So even with oil collapsing and the dollar collapsing, employment in Alberta still went up. Certainly employment losses could be coming down the road. By contrast, Ontario lost small amounts of jobs in November and December and not much change for January. So much for Ontario leading the county in GDP growth.

I'll look more closely at the Ontario and Hamilton numbers in another post on the weekend.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Toronto December 2013 Unemployment Numbers

I'm slowly progressing towards making a post about the Hamilton 2013 December jobs numbers, but I thought I would mention the poor Toronto numbers first. Some stats from this article from the Toronto Star:

"The jobless rate for the Toronto region — at 8.4 per cent in December — is the second highest among Canada’s major urban centres.

It is higher than the national average — 7.2 per cent — and it is even higher than that for cities like Windsor, which were harder hit by the 2008 recession, according to Statistics Canada data.

The city’s jobless rate is even higher when the numbers for the suburbs are stripped out of the StatsCan data for the Toronto area.

In a report delivered Tuesday to the city’s economic development committee, councillors heard the unemployment rate in Toronto proper had risen to 10.1 per cent."

Wow 10.1 percent in the City of Toronto is quite high, although I'm sure historically Toronto has had a relatively higher level compared to other areas of Ontario. One thing I would say about it, is that with rising housing and rental costs over the past decade in Toronto coupled with median income that has been pretty stagnant over the same time period, a lot of people in Toronto don't have a lot of money left over after housing costs to buy discretionary goods and services. That can't be very good for job creation.

Where will employment in Toronto go in 2014? The dollar dropping against the US dollar recently should help, bringing in tourism and lowering the number of the people that go to the US or other places for tourism or shopping. I'm not sure how much manufacturing is left in Toronto proper to benefit from a lower dollar.

What will be interesting will be to see how many Torontonians move out to other places including Alberta versus immigrants new to the country moving in and how that changes the composition of employment. 

Ontario Loses 39,000 Jobs in December

A bit late on commenting on the latest Canadian employment numbers, but it needs to be analyzed. The headline was that Canada lost 46,000 jobs, but that really buries the lede that Ontario lost 39,000 jobs (with approximately 40% of the population) and the unemployment went from 7.2 to 7.9. Month to month numbers are going to be noisy but that is a pretty big jump for one jump.

There's been a raft of big plant closings in Ontario lately (for example Heinz in Leamington) and these jobs plus their knock on effects were bound to show up in the unemployment numbers eventually. A high dollar and high electricity prices have been causing manufacturing employment to leave Ontario so this shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

The dollar has been tanking recently (down to 92 cents) against its US counterpart and that definitely helps Ontario, both by making manufacturing wages cheaper relatively and also keeping Ontarians shopping at home and potentially increasing foreign tourism while depressing Ontarians spending their money abroad. The dollar decreasing also makes Ontario's high electricity prices more competitive with competing jurisdictions like New York state. Unfortunately prices are still scheduled to rise significantly over the next five years so even a 15% decrease in the value of the dollar won't help that much.

Losing employment is going to have to hurt Ontario tax revenues. Ontario income tax is heavily weighted to those who make enough to pay at the surtax levels so job losses at manufacturing plants which generally pay more than service sector jobs can have bigger effects. Jobless also spend less so HST revenues will be lower. Some of those employed will go on welfare which raises expenses for the province and municipalities. These job losses probably won't hurt government revenues for 2013 coming so late in the year, but they don't look good for next year.

I haven't checked the Hamilton individual numbers yet, but I'll make an individual post about them.

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.