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22,000

Never saw that coming, Canada created 22,000 jobs in December, and the vast majority are permanent (81%) in the manufacturing segment! These are not “Christmas related jobs, they are real employment. In a sense, this increase is not entirely surprising, Canadian companies have been investing massively in machines and tool in 2010, once these are installed employees have to be hired to operate these machines. It was believed that this uptick in employment would only occur in the first quarter of 2011 or even the second quarter, instead it has begun earlier than anticipated. It could be that because there is tremendous slack capacity in the US and Europe (where these machine tools were acquired) that installation was quicker than anticipated. At any rate the employment picture for Canada in December was excellent

Highlights from StatsCan:


  • Employment up for the second consecutive month in December, with an increase of 22,000. Full-time employment was up 38,000 in December, the fourth increase in the past five months.
  • Increases in the number of private sector employees in December were partly offset by declines in self-employment.
  • The unemployment rate held steady at 7.6%. Compared with December 2009, employment increased by 2.2% (+369,000), following a decline of 1.1% the previous year.
  • Employment increased in manufacturing; transportation and warehousing; as well as in natural resources. At the same time, there were declines in construction; health care and social assistance; wholesale and retail trade; business building and other support services; as well as agriculture
  • Among the provinces, Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador saw employment gains in December, while British Columbia posted declines. Employment was little changed in the other provinces. Strong gains in manufacturing and transportation and warehousing
  • Following a decline of 29,000 the previous month, manufacturing employment increased by 66,000 in December. The bulk of the gains were in Ontario and Quebec and were spread across a number of industries. This follows little overall change in the manufacturing sector in the previous 18 months.
  • Transportation and warehousing also saw a notable gain in December (+45,000). With this gain, employment in this industry was up 10.8% (+85,000) compared with December 2009.
  • Employment in natural resources increased by 7,700 in December, bringing growth in the industry to 10.8% (+33,000) over the past 12 months.
  • My soft spot: employment in Quebec increased by 25,000 in December, Quebec employment was up 102,000 (+2.6%) from a year earlier. Quebec’s economy is 1/100th that of the U.S., so Quebec created the equivalent to 10 million jobs in the U.S. over the past year

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