Less Part Time Jobs in April in Canada

That was the word from our friends at Stats Canada on Friday. While there are more full-time jobs, the number of part-time jobs dropped sharply, netting a 20,000 job drop in April 2015. As I have grumbled about before, the inability to have the statistics reflect or weigh the value of full and part time jobs, I guess this is the best data we have for now. For confusion, the unemployment rate remained steady at 6.8% (as it has for the past three months? March, and February had ups and downs, but the unemployment remains constant? Amazing).

To quote Stats Canada:

In the 12 months to April, employment increased by 139,000 (+0.8%), with all of the growth in full-time work. Over the same period, the total number of hours worked increased by 0.9%.

More hours worked is a good measurement to work with.

Given this is an election year, remember these numbers will be interpreted uniquely by each political party, and to confuse them, you have the unemployment graph like this:

Looking at that graph, you’d say things look OK, but that the economy’s ability to create jobs, might be a little suspect?

The big losers this month are women over the age of 55:

For women aged 55 and older, employment declined by 15,000 in April and the unemployment rate edged up to 5.5%. Compared with 12 months earlier, employment was little changed for this group.

What about the young folk? No less jobs, but more of them looking:

While employment among youth aged 15 to 24 was little changed in April, their unemployment rate rose 0.6 percentage points to 13.6%, as more of them searched for work. On a year-over-year basis, youth employment was little changed.

Things are looking moribund in the job market?

Employment By Sector

The Big table this month is interesting, I have edited out the percentage changes to make it a bit more readable.

Employment by class of worker and industry (based on NAICS¹) – Seasonally adjusted

	March 2015	April 2015	Std error2	March to April 2015	April 2014 to April 2015
	thousands	change in thousands
Class of worker
Employees	15,161.8	15,166.1	34.8	4.3	138.8
Self-employed	2,752.9	2,728.8	24.8	-24.1	0.3
Public/private sector employees
Public	3,605.5	3,585.6	19.6	-19.9	63.5
Private	11,556.3	11,580.5	34.8	24.2	75.3
All industries	17,914.6	17,894.9	28.7	-19.7	139.1
Goods-producing sector	3,876.6	3,861.1	16.2	-15.5	-27.8
Agriculture	297.1	299.1	5.7	2.0	-8.7
Natural resources3	358.1	357.2	5.5	-0.9	-25.3
Utilities	136.5	137.9	2.4	1.4	-0.7
Construction	1,396.6	1,368.2	10.9	-28.4	19.9
Manufacturing	1,688.3	1,698.7	10.3	10.4	-12.9
Services-producing sector	14,038.1	14,033.9	27.2	-4.2	167.0
Trade	2,743.5	2,723.0	14.2	-20.5	-2.7
Transportation and warehousing	918.0	923.4	7.7	5.4	24.4
Finance, insurance, real estate and leasing	1,097.4	1,099.1	8.1	1.7	21.6
Professional, scientific and technical services	1,347.1	1,349.8	10.5	2.7	28.6
Business, building and other support services	745.7	756.7	9.6	11.0	3.8
Educational services	1,290.0	1,287.7	10.3	-2.3	72.5
Health care and social assistance	2,268.9	2,268.9	10.5	0.0	54.6
Information, culture and recreation	751.7	741.9	9.5	-9.8	-23.5
Accommodation and food services	1,219.7	1,223.3	11.2	3.6	28.3
Other services	760.7	766.2	8.1	5.5	-36.7
Public administration	895.4	893.9	6.9	-1.5	-4.1

1. North American Industry Classification System.
2. Average standard error for change in two consecutive months. See “Sampling variability of estimates” in the section “About the Labour Force Survey” at the end of the publication Labour Force Information (Catalogue number71-001-X) for further explanations.

3.Also referred to as forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction.

Note(s):

The sum of individual categories may not always add up to the total as a result of rounding.

Source(s):

CANSIM tables 282-0088 and 282-0089.

Employments Reports for 2015

• January 2015 More Part Time Jobs
• February 2015 Unemployment Up
• March 2015 Still more part time jobs