One economist says December’s employment figures were positive, breaking the trend of job gains lagging population growth.
Statistics Canada released its monthly labour force survey on Friday, which noted Canada added 91,000 jobs during the month of December, coming in far higher than economists expected. The unemployment rate decreased 0.1 percentage points to 6.7 per cent during the same period.
“Finally, a decent month. It was a pretty rough 2024 for the Canadian job market. We saw job gains in the 40-50 thousand (range) often, but every month they were always lagging that surging pace of population growth. Finally, we get a break in that,” Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at Indeed, said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg Friday.
He added that the number of jobs added in the Canadian economy “actually surpassed rapid population growth” but said the figures are reflective of just one month and don’t necessarily indicate a broader trend.
“The unemployment rate (is) 6.7 per cent. That’s still well above where it was earlier. And so, the broader, softer trend in the Canadian labour market persists. But any time you can slow that trend, it’s a good sign that things, at least for now, aren’t going off the rails,” Bernard said.
He noted the overall backdrop in the economy has largely not been positive.
“We’ve kind of seen as employer demand has waned in Canada, unemployment rise, and we’re going to need a turnaround in employer hiring appetite to really get these job numbers on a sustainable path forward, but at least in the near term to end 2024, things ended a bit stronger than expected,” Bernard said.
Despite the overall gains in the job market, the labour force survey noted declining wage growth, with hourly wages rising 3.8 per cent on an annual basis in December. This marked the slowest pace since May 2022.
With files from The Canadian Press.