In October, Canada gained 66,600 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped 0.2 percentage points to 6.9 per cent. (Photo by Mike Campbell/NurPhoto via Getty Images) · NurPhoto via Getty Images
Canada’s labour market added a net 53,600 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 6.5 per cent, according to Statistics Canada data released on Friday.
Economists had expected the Canadian economy to lose 5,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate to rise back up to seven per cent, according to consensus estimates published by CIBC.
The November gains were driven largely by part-time employment, which CIBC economist Andrew Grantham says suggests “the composition wasn’t quite as strong as the headline.” Economists made a similar observation about October’s surprise addition of 66,600 jobs, which was also dominated by part-time work.
Grantham also notes the 0.2 percentage point drop in the participation rate — a measure of the proportion of the population working or actively seeking work — which he says “flattered” the unemployment rate. Still, the November data were “still clearly much better than expected,” Gratham acknowledges.
“While we doubt that the labour market is quite as strong as today’s headline data suggests… today’s release is still supportive of our assumption that the Bank of Canada’s rate-cutting cycle has ended,” he wrote.
Job growth last month was concentrated among youth aged 15 to 24 (50,000 jobs added). By industry, the most jobs were added in healthcare and social assistance (up 46,000, or 1.6 per cent), accommodation and food services (up 14,000 or 1.2 per cent) and natural resources (up 11,000 or 3.4 per cent). The increases in accommodation and food services were the first since January.
Average hourly wages were up 3.6 per cent from November 2024, rising $1.27 to $37.
In a note published last week, CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld said the October figures “[seem] to have been an outlier on the high side relative to other indicators” with the unemployment rate potentially poised to edge higher again as a result.
“That’s likely not enough to bring some of the BoC [Bank of Canada] hawks onside for a December rate cut,” Shenfeld argued, “because the Bank’s last statement suggested they wanted to step aside and let some data go by to judge whether rates were indeed, as they put it, ‘about right’ at this point.”
This story will be updated.
John MacFarlane is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on X @jmacf.
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