Employment grows, south and north of the 49th parallel

It's hard to find much to dislike in the US non-farm payrolls report for December, released earlier today. A total of 292,000 jobs were created, well above the analysts' consensus of 200,000. Data for the preceding two months were revised higher, by a total of 50,000 jobs. The unemployment rate was stable at 5 percent, but only because strong labour market conditions are attracting large numbers of people back into the workforce.

If this report was all the Fed had to consider at the next FOMC meeting, there would be little doubt that the committee would restate its commitment to gradual tightening of monetary conditions, although a further rate move is unlikely until the end of Q1.  However, the problems in global markets may yet stay the Fed's hand, especially if it judges that weakness in China and elsewhere will have a negative impact on the US's far-from-robust export sector. It's too soon to tell.

In Canada, the December employment numbers also look good at first blush, and even beyond the headlines, there are good things to be found. The economy added almost 23,000 jobs in the month, beating expectations. The economy added a total of 158,000 jobs for the year as a whole, a gain of 0.9 percent.  That's slightly higher than the annual gains seen in 2013 and 2014, and is a bit surprising in light of the slow GDP growth (including a near-recession) seen throughout the year.

Although employment in the resource sector fell, there was an encouraging increase in manufacturing employment. This rose 2.1 percent for the full year, the first increase since 2012. Surprisingly, though, most of these gains were seen in British Columbia rather than the traditional manufacturing heartland of southern Ontario. If you're inclined to see the cup as half empty -- and in this case, I surely am -- this could be construed as a further sign that the manufacturing jobs lost in Ontario's automotive sector over the past couple of decades are gone for good.  

This is all well and good, but it remains impossible to feel any level of comfort with StatsCan's monthly labour force survey. The gyrations within the report -- full versus part time employment, private versus public sector, province versus province and so on -- continue to defy belief. In the December report we are told that only Ontario saw any job gains (35,000 positions in total); that there were no full-time jobs created, only part time; and that there were on aggregate no new jobs in either the private or public sectors, yet 40,000 people found new self-employment in the month. Department store Santas, maybe?

When data are sliced-and-diced as many ways as employment numbers are, odd things will occasionally happen.  With the Canadian labour force survey, very odd things seem to happen every month.