The GM effect?

Statistics Canada reported this morning that employment fell by 1800 in October -- a figure well within the sampling error for the series -- keeping the unemployment rate at 5.5 percent, just 0.1 percent above its all-time low.  The ever-unreliable analysts' consensus had expected a gain of about 16,000; since the numbers were released,  those self-same analysts have been noting that the pullback comes after very strong reports for August and September, implying that nobody should really have been surprised.

Isn't there another explanation?  The most significant job losses in October were in the manufacturing sector in Ontario, which reportedly shed 23,000 positions. The lengthy strike at GM in the United States led to widely-reported shutdowns at GM plants in Oshawa and St Catharines, both in that Province.  Almost all of the company's 7,600 employees in Canada were unemployed at precisely the time of StatsCan's monthly survey.  On the entirely reasonable assumption that parts companies that supply GM were also forced to make temporary layoffs, it's not hard to make the case that the October setback will be largely unwound in the November data, since the GM strike has now ended.

I'm reluctant to be definitive about this because the StatsCan data release makes no mention of it, and none of the media outlets I have been able to check has picked up on it.  However, the corresponding US non-farms payrolls survey for October, released a week ago, provided details of the impact of the GM strike on its data, offering reassurance that the relatively low rise in payrolls was the result of this temporary factor rather than a worsening trend. It would be surprising if the same were not true, albeit to a lesser extent, here in Canada.

The November data should tell us whether I'm right or not, and I will 'fess up or brag accordingly when the data are released in early December.