Statistics Canada (StatCan) says Canada’s economy added 35,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate held steady at five percent for the fourth consecutive month.
The country’s employment rate rose by 0.2 percent, representing an increase of 0.1 percent compared to February, according to the latest StatCan data released on April 6.
The increase in jobs still falls far below that seen in January, in which month the economy added
150,000 new jobs.
Of the new jobs added last month, about 18,8000 of them are full-time positions while around 15,900 of them are part-time jobs.
A number of economists previously anticipated that Canada’s job market would slightly cool this month, with analysts from TD Bank and CIBC saying the country’s unemployment rate would begin rising in March.
Avery Shenfeld, chief economist of CIBC Capital Markets, wrote in a
report on March 31 that CIBC suspected Canada’s employment surge in early 2023 was partly a “statistical illusion” due to some sectors shedding less staff than they normally would at the beginning of a new year.
“We expect to see a modest decline in employment during March, although that would still leave a very positive underlying trend,” Shenfeld wrote.
“While the decline we expect in March employment could be chalked up to statistical noise, we also anticipate that a weakening economy will bring slower growth in employment than the labour force throughout the remainder of the year, seeing the unemployment rate continuing to drift higher towards 6%,” he added.
James Orlando, director of TD Economics,
wrote on March 28 that he expects Canada’s unemployment rate to rise by 1.5 percentage points over the next few quarters.
However, in response to the new Statistics Canada report on April 6,
Orlando wrote that Canada’s job market seems to show no signs of slowing in the near future.
Statistics Canada says Canada’s employment rate has generally
trended upward since September 2022 following large losses during the pandemic. Overall, the number of employed Canadians since last September has risen by 383,000.
Throughout the pandemic, most of the new jobs created across the country were in the
public sector, according to a Fraser Institute study published last year.
The study found that the public sector accounted for over 86 percent of all new jobs created since the pandemic’s outset in 2020, leaving jobs in the private sector to account for less than 15 percent of new jobs.
New data would appear to show a turnaround on that matter, with StatCan saying that almost all the new jobs added to the economy in March were in the private sector, while public sector employment numbers saw “little change” compared to February.
Orlando
said in response to the new data that Canada’s private sector job growth shows “there is strong underlying momentum that continues to build” in the economy.
Rahul Vaidyanath contributed to this report.
