Canadian jobs data for March 2021:
- Prior was +259.2K
- Full time +175.4K vs +88.2K prior
- Part time 127.8K vs +171.0K prior
- Unemployment rate 7.5% vs 8.0% expected (8.2% prior)
- Participation rate 65.2% vs 64.7% prior
- Hourly wage rate for permanent employees +2.0% vs 1.9% y/y expected
- Prior wage rate +4.3% y/y
- Total hours worked +2.0% vs +1.4% prior
- Long-term unemployment flat in March
- Full report
This is a sensational jobs report. As a rule of thumb, you multiply this by 10 to give you a sense of how it would compared to non-farm payrolls. That's imperfect in a lot of ways because Canadian data is more volatile but it's undoubtedly an amazing report.
Sadly, much of that progress is going to be erased in April because of strict lockdowns but I think you can look beyond that and conclude that Canada can bounce back quickly once the vaccines really roll out, which is going to be May, June, July.
With this report, employment is within 1.5% of its pre-covid level, or just 296K jobs.
