Friday, the 2016 year ending Labour Force Survey was published by Stats Canada and it confirmed that 2016 was the year of the part-time jobs.
To quote the survey overview:
In the 12 months to December, employment gains totalled 214,000 or 1.2%, compared with a growth rate of 0.9% observed over the same period one year earlier. A year-end review is presented in a separate section below.
Which sounds wonderful, except when you have a look a little deeper in the Analysis of the data, and find out the following gem:
Part-time employment trended up throughout 2016, rising by 154,000 or 4.5%, while full-time employment was little changed. During the same period, the number of hours worked was virtually unchanged.
So a lot of these new jobs end up being part-time employment. Looking at the graphs you can see how this year is the year of the part-time job in Canada. Is this a good thing? No, not really, but I guess it is better than losing jobs overall, or maybe not. How many multi-job (part-time jobs) folks are out there? That would be an interesting statistic.
The unemployment rate for the entire year of 2016 ends up down 0.2% to 6.9% which is nowhere near the American numbers (I believe 4%) but still good that the unemployment numbers are dropping (slowly).
British Columbia is the place to be if you are looking for a job (job growth is the strongest there for the past year).
Given the recovery that seems to be starting in the west (in the Oil fields) this could mean the Canadian economy might be getting ready to surge, but there is the omnipresent question about our neighbours down south and what interesting new policies will come forward with their new government? Let us hope that 2017 becomes the year of Full-Time jobs ? (enough of the part-time jobs).
