Canadian jobs data for December are remarkable. The economy reportedly added 54,000 jobs in the month, compared to an economists' consensus that effectively called for no change. This made 2016 the best year for job creation since 2012.
I've posted here innumerable times about the unreliability of the Canadian Labour Force Survey, and certainly a result like this one deserves plenty of caveats. Did the economy really add 81,000 full-time jobs in a single month, after several years in which full time employment has been relentlessly replaced by part-time work? Precedent suggests that the January data will see a sharp reversal in the full-time jobs data, which will leave us as much in the dark as ever about what is really going on.
Rather than listening to me blithering on even longer about this, I encourage you to amuse yourself by scrolling through the comments section of the linked article. The sourpuss reactions to the numbers began immediately: "McJobs"; "all December retail jobs that have already disappeared"; "how many of those jobs required post-secondary education". One commenter then went to the trouble of posting the actual breakdown, which strongly suggested that the jobs were in fact concentrated in skilled, white-collar sectors of the economy. Think that stopped the nay-sayers? Think again!
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