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Jobs, jobs, jobs!:

The Canadian economy showed resilience in October as it created a robust number of jobs, more than recouping the positions lost during a summer lull.

Employment jumped by 108,000 in October, far more than the 10,000 that financial analysts expected, Statistics Canada said on Friday. Combined with a modest gain in September, the recent uptick has taken total employment to an all-time high. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.2 per cent as more people participated in the labour market.
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Analysts were encouraged by the details of the Canadian report: Job creation was entirely in full-time positions and mostly in the private sector. Total hours worked rose 0.7 per cent, an early sign economic growth will remain positive in the fourth quarter.

Compensation, meanwhile, picked up again. Average hourly wages grew 5.6 per cent over the past year, up from 5.2 per cent in September, marking a fifth consecutive month above 5 per cent.
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Traders are pricing in a 65-per-cent chance the Bank of Canada hikes its key rate by 50 basis points on Dec. 7. (A basis point is 1/100th of a percentage point.) Prior to the jobs report, those odds were about 50 per cent.

… and in the States:

Job growth remained stubbornly robust in October despite higher interest rates, defying policymakers’ efforts to dampen the labor market and curb the fastest inflation in generations.

Employers added 261,000 jobs last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said Friday. That was down from 315,000 in September. The unemployment rate rose to 3.7 percent.
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Average hourly earnings climbed by 4.7 percent in the year through October. While that is a slight slowdown from 5 percent in the year through September, it remains a very rapid pace. Between September and October, wages climbed by 0.4 percent, more than the increase the month before and the fastest pace of monthly increase since July.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2022 at 7:23 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.