Canada Adds 15,000 Jobs in February

The economy added 15,400 net new jobs last month and the unemployment rate edged down to 5.8 per cent — but the gains were due to a surge in part-time work that offset a heavy decline in full-time positions.

Statistics Canada’s latest labour force survey, released Friday, also found that the job gains in February were driven by an increase of 50,300 in public-sector jobs.

The country lost 39,300 full-time jobs and generated 54,700 part-time positions last month, the report said.


usdcad Canadian dollar graph, March 9, 2018

Looking back, the Canadian job market delivered a strong performance over a 12-month period by adding 282,500 positions for a 1.5 per cent expansion.

All of that year-over-year growth came from full-time work.

While jobs were added in Canada as a whole, two of three local communities saw their unemployment rates edge upward.

Waterloo Region’s unemployment rose to 5.3 per cent from 5.1 per cent one month earlier, while Brantford’s hit its highest mark since last October at 5.1 per cent, up from 4.7 per cent in January.

In Guelph, unemployment fell for the third straight month, hitting 5.3 per cent.

via CTV News

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza