from Brittney Windatt

Employment in Canada grew by 28,000 in June, continuing its rise for the third consecutive month.  According to June’s labour market survey report from Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate remains at 7.4 percent as the number of people participating in the labour market increased; however, since mid-2009, the unemployment rate has declined.

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Statistics Canada released its latest labour market survey results on Friday, February 4th - and it is good news. 69,000 new jobs were created, and although unemployment edged up, it was simply because more people were looking for work (and presumably feel more optimistic about their chances of finding employment). But overall, the economic climate remains uncertain - so the recovery will likely remain uneven.
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Canada’s economy has been weathering the “great recession” better than most other developed economies, we were told, and the proof was supposedly in the job numbers. Unemployment is still quite high, but until Friday, Statistics Canada was at least reporting that Canada’s economy had already regained all jobs lost in the recession.

But on Friday, January 28th, the story changed. Statistics Canada issued a revision to employment numbers that it had reported previously. It turned out that, after all, the jobs lost in the recession have not been recovered quite yet. (more…)

Two economic reports released in the first half of January 2011 paint a confusing, somewhat contradictory picture of Canada’s prospects for economic recovery this year. But both of them agree that any recovery will be subdued, a far cry from the solid recovery many were hoping to see. (more…)

Statistics Canada reported today that 672,200 people received regular Employment Insurance benefits in July, down 31,400 from June. They also stated that the decline offset the increases in spring and brought the number of beneficiaries to March levels.
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According to the results from a recent Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, Canadian employers are expecting a consistent hiring climate for Q4 2010. In the course of the next three months, the Manufacturing-Durables industry sector expect to see an active hiring pace — the most optimistic forecast in the past 10 years.
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Statistics Canada released its latest labour force survey on Friday (read the full survey here: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100507/dq100507a-eng.htm ), and it seems to be all good news. Employment grew in April at a rate not seen since 2002. In fact, the rate of employment gains in April was comparable to the magnitude of monthly employment losses that we were seeing in the early months of the recession.
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February GDP data which Statistics Canada published on April 30, 2010 indicates that real GDP grew by 0.3%. This is welcome news that seems to indicate that an economic recovery is, indeed, taking hold. Yet the pace of the recovery is still fairly anemic and mired by various risk factors – so the economy is not out of woods quite yet.
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