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Parts of the Canadian jobs number were good:

A blast of new jobs last month knocked the country’s unemployment rate down to its lowest level since Statistics Canada started measuring comparable data more than 40 years ago. But despite eye-catching progress, Friday’s numbers also delivered disappointment.

Canada added 94,100 net jobs for its largest monthly increase since March 2012 when there was a gain of 94,000 jobs, Statistics Canada said in its the labour force survey. The November surge was fuelled by other positives: 89,900 new full-time positions and 78,600 employee jobs in the private sector.

The jobless rate fell to 5.6 per cent last month from October’s reading of 5.8 per cent, which had been the previous low mark since comparable data first became available in 1976. The old statistical approach — prior to 1976 — registered an unemployment rate reading of 5.4 per cent in 1974.

The improvements, however, obscured a key piece of data: weakening wage growth.

Year-over-year average hourly wage growth for permanent employees continued its decline in November to 1.46 per cent — its lowest reading since July 2017.

So basically, we are cementing our position as a low-productivity society based on low wages. Great.

Meanwhile, in the States:

[Finding new employees] is a headache employers across the country are confronting, as Friday’s monthly jobs report from the government illustrated. The unemployment rate in November held steady at 3.7 percent — the lowest in nearly half a century. And while the pace of hiring slowed to 155,000 from October’s above-average showing, the parade of payroll gains marched on uninterrupted for the 98th month.

After a week in which the markets gyrated and presidential tweets caused trade tensions to flare, the labor market’s steadiness offered a dose of calm.
…
Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent in November, keeping the year-over-year average at 3.1 percent for the second month in a row, a level not seen since the recession.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2018 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.