The monthly labour market data from Statistics Canada never fail to leave us scratching our heads. Just take a look at the March data, released this morning. The headline: the economy added 19,400 jobs in the month, way above the market consensus and continuing the strong trend seen since the turn of the year. Almost all of the new jobs were reported to be full-time positions, and more than 21,00 jobs were added in the manufacturing sector, the best report in well over a decade.
And yet....it also appears that almost all of the new jobs were in the "self employed" category. This seems unlikely in itself, and even if it is literally true, leaves open the question of how stable these new positions are. Then there's the unemployment rate, which ticked up to 6.7 percent despite the strong job creation. It appears that the number of people looking for work increased in March, which is usually taken as a positive sign.
So what's the bottom line? It looks as though the economy retains good forward momentum, even though the details of today's report demand caution. Weaker external trade data reported earlier this week (goods trade unexpectedly slipped back into deficit in February) may well be just a one-off. All-in-all, nothing to trigger any kind of policy change by the Bank of Canada in the near term; and for the longer term, much still depends on how the NAFTA renegotiations pan out.
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