Canada’s household labor force survey has tended to provide rather suspect data from time to time. The recent experience tends to echo this. For example, in November and December, the Canadian job market seemed to soar by 81,000 and 65,000 new employees, only to tank in January by 88,000 employees.

As well, the unemployment rate rose slightly in January to 5.9% and average hourly earnings sped up to a 3.3% y/y rate of increase.

Adjusted to U.S. concepts, the unemployment rate in Canada was 4.9% in January, compared with 4.1% in the United States. In other words, the Canadian job market also seems to be quite tight, though not as tight as the American.

While the true picture may be a bit confusing, perhaps what is even more perplexing is the fact that full-time employment growth in January was even higher than in the previous two months.

Indeed, the overall drop in employment in January was more than entirely due to a 127,000 reduction in part-time employment.

There also continues to be quite a wide variation of unemployment rates by province in Canada. In January, the Ontario unemployment rate was 5.5%, the Quebec rate was 5.4%, BC’s was 4.6% and Alberta’s was 7%. 

Unemployment Rate By Province, January 2018