Friday our friends from Stats Canada published the year-end Labour Force Survey, and it was fine, nothing too exciting, but no big changes either, Employment up a little and Unemployment staying about the same. Specifically employment was up 23,000 raising the overall rate by 0.1%, although unemployment stayed the same as last month (7.1%).
For the whole year a relatively good employment story with the following statement:
In the 12 months to December, employment gains totalled 158,000 or 0.9%, slightly above the growth rate of 0.7% in both 2013 and 2014.
So a better story than in the previous two years.
An increasing curve looks nice, but the unemployment graph paints a clearer picture (if the data is still a little peculiar).
The following three lines are the telling sentences from the report.
In December, employment rose by 29,000 among people aged 55 and older, and their unemployment rate edged down to 5.8%.
Despite little employment change among people aged 25 to 54, their unemployment rate increased 0.2 percentage points to 6.3% as more of them searched for work.
Employment was also little changed among youths aged 15 to 24 and their unemployment rate was 13.0% in December.
So (as usual) life is good for old guys (like me), but it still kind of sucks for the young folks? I believe Le Dauphin (Mr. Trudeau) will need to do something about his “target audience” employment levels.
One more telling statement in the report is:
The number of public sector employees increased by 41,000 (+1.1%), driven by gains in health care and social assistance and, to a lesser extent, in public administration. At the same time, the number of private sector employees was little changed.
Creating more public sector jobs is not growing the economy, it is growing the government.
Labour News for 2015
Here are some of the posts about jobs from this past year:
- Unemployment Up in November
- More Ladies Aged 55 and 0lder Working in October in Canada
- More Working but also Unemployed in September
- Ironic Labour Numbers on Labour Day for August
- 6600 More Jobs in Canada in July
- More Full Time Jobs in Canada in June
- More Full Time Work in Canada in May
- Less Part Time Jobs in April in Canada
- More Part-Time Jobs in Canada, Yea?!?
- Unemployment Up in February in Canada
- More Part Time Jobs in Canada in January
Yes, Mr. Trudeau has to start doing something for the young generation along with taking care of the Syrians. Otherwise, his next term is not going to happen.
Hope, the infrastructure development will bring some full time jobs. Canada needs to find ways to make the economy better. That is thinking about things other than oil.
He seems to have a busy few years ahead of him, doesn’t he?