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Jobs, jobs, jobs!:

The labour market added 150,000 positions last month, following a gain of roughly 69,000 jobs in December, Statistics Canada said in a report published Friday. Financial analysts were expecting an increase of 15,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 5 per cent.

The hiring surge comes a week after the United States reported a gain of 517,000 positions in January, an outsized increase that also surprised analysts.

By now, many economists projected that Canada would be mired in the early weeks of a mild recession. However, Friday’s report shows that employers are continuing to add to their headcounts, despite the potential stress caused by sharply higher borrowing rates.
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Friday’s report pointed to strength in various parts of the labour market. Jobs with full-time hours increased by 121,000 in January, while the private sector drove a gain of 115,000 positions.

After several months of losses, retail and wholesale trade jumped by 59,000 jobs, the largest gain by industry. Health care and social assistance rose by 40,000.

The labour market is drawing plenty of new participants. In January, an additional 153,000 people joined the labour force – meaning, they either took jobs or are actively looking for one. The participation rate is increasing in most major demographic groups.
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Average hourly wages rose 4.5 per cent over the past year, down from 4.8 per cent in December. However, the year-over-year comparison was partially a reflection of higher wages in January, 2022, when many lower-paid service workers were temporarily laid off as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 led to a spike of infections.

Liquidity is never important to retail … until it is:

Certain alternative investment funds are facing elevated redemption demands from retail investors — a development that poses possible regulatory and reputational risks to alt fund managers, if not an operational challenge, says Fitch Ratings.

In a new report, the rating agency said certain alt investment vehicles known as “perpetual non-traded” funds (typically REITs or business development corporations) have faced increased redemption requests from investors in recent months.

These vehicles, which aren’t publicly traded and so have no public liquidity, cap redemptions to preserve assets and fund managers’ fee revenues. Typically, funds cap redemptions at 2% of their net asset value per month, or 5% per quarter, it noted.

Recently, several funds have invoked their redemption limits after increased demands from investors hit their pre-determined thresholds, Fitch reported.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2023 at 8:57 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.