Canadan and Ontario July 2016 Employment Numbers. Ugh. Ontario Loses 20,400 Full-Time Jobs in 2016

Employment numbers came out yesterday for Canada and the provinces and for Canada and Ontario especially, the numbers aren't great.

The headline number is that Canada lost 31,900 jobs (seasonally adjusted) in July, while Ontario lost 36,100 jobs. So effective the rest of country actually gained 4,200 jobs. So not good for Ontario while not that bad for the rest of the country. Canada's full-time jobs numbers decreased by 64,300 over the first six months of 2016, while the total number of jobs increased by 37,800 on increased part-time jobs.

For Ontario, over the first half of the year, the province only gained 500 jobs, which is way less than what is required to keep up with population growth. Strangely, Ontario's minister of economic development, Brad Duguid is quoted in a CBC article as saying " Obviously, we would have rather seen an increase in jobs in July, but the overall trends in Ontario continue to remain very, very positive"

More disturbingly, Ontario has lost 20,400 full-time jobs over the first half of 2016. That is with the province showing strong GDP growth in the first quarter of 2016 of 3.0% annualized. I have a feeling that the second quarter GDP number for Ontario will be lower than 3.0%. The lower dollar doesn't seem to be helping Ontario that much, which could well mean an even lower dollar.

Another bad thing for Ontario is that the participation rate cratered from 60.8% to 60.4% in July, while the unemployment rate remained unchanged from 6.4%. This is an example of looking beyond the employment rate.

July could certainly be a blip and with the US beating expectations with 255,000 jobs versus 180,00 jobs, Ontario could pick it up in August. Barring a much lower dollar though, I'm not holding my breath, as what economic strength Ontario has had, is in residential real estate. The US doesn't matter as much anymore.
 

Ontario and Canada January 2016 Jobs Numbers

I've been meaning to get around to covering the Statscan employment report for January. The tl;dr is Canada poor Ontario good. Although I think there's more to it than that.

Canada overall lost 5,700 jobs, with Alberta losing 10,000 which is a large number for one month for a province the size of Alberta.

Ontario on the other hand Ontario gained 19,800 jobs which is impressive. Full-time jobs were up 16,300 while part-time jobs were up 3,600. What I wonder is how many of those full-time jobs were people declaring themselves self-employed and full-time. That often isn't the sign of a strong economy. Year over year, in Ontario jobs were up 100,200 which is reasonably, although not amazing given population growth. Full-time jobs however were up 180,600 while part-time jobs were down 80,400. I wonder if over the year, people declaring themselves self-employed was a factor for the full-time job growth. Potentially though the rapid fall of the dollar could be resulting in companies increasing their demand for labour and moving people from part to full-time hours. Overall in Canada, employee jobs increased by 89,400 while self-employed jobs increased by 36,200 jobs. I'm surmising that some of those jobs were in Ontario.

February's numbers should also be interesting. One would expect Alberta to continue to shed private sector jobs as oil hovers around US$ 30 per barrel and Ontario to pick up jobs due to the low dollar

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.

October 2015 Canada Employment Up 41.5K, Ontario 29.2K

Statscan released their employment data for October and the numbers were good for both Canada and Ontario. Jobs rose by 41,500 in Canada, with full-time up 9,000 and part-time up 35,400. However the caveat is that these included jobs associated with the election in October and thus the number is pushed up artificially. We'll have to wait for the November numbers for more of a true number.

Ontario also had a very good number, with jobs up by 29,200. Full-time jobs were up by 26,800 with part-time jobs up by 1,300. Again we will have to wait, as Ontario likely had around 40% of the election hiring. For Ontario jobs are still slightly down since June, which is a fairly stagnant period of employment growth, especially with the increasing population.

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.

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.

Hamilton November 2014 Employment Numbers

Here's a look at the Statscan employment numbers for Hamilton for November 2014. Compared to a year ago the population was up 6.4 thousand to 639.7 thousand. The labour force was up 12.1 to 408.2 thousand, while the number of employed was up 16.1 thousand to 385.5 compared to a year ago.

That's pretty impressive, especially considering the increase was considerably over the population increase. Maybe that was just a particularly good interval, but it is over a year.

Strangely, unemployment was 22.7 thousand down a comparatively large 4.0 thousand. Where did those people go, as there's always the danger they just dropped out of the labour force. However the participation rate was up to 63.8% an increase of 1.3%, which means people weren't just dropping out of the labour force.

So good year over year numbers for Hamilton, especially considering the numbers for the province overall weren't that impressive.

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.

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.