Canada: Employment edged down 7k in March – RBC

Nathan Janzen, senior economist at the Royal Bank of Canada, points out that the Canada’s headline employment dipped 7k in March, a relatively small change given normal volatility in the monthly measure and retracing little of the 290k gain over the prior 6 months.

Key Quotes

“The unemployment rate held steady at 5.8%, still right around multi-decade lows.”

“Wage growth ticked up slightly and hours worked rebounded as a jump in the number of hours lost due to weather in February reversed.”

“Wage growth ticked modestly higher, although at 2.4% year-over-year is still lower than one would ordinarily expect given what still look ostensibly like quite tight labour markets.  And hours worked rebounded 1.0% after falling 0.7% in February as the number of hours of work lost to bad weather fell after jumping higher the earlier month.  The data should do little to change the broader narrative that labour markets in Canada still look pretty solid.”