October’s surprise addition<\/a> of 66,600 jobs, which was also dominated by part-time work.<\/p>\nGrantham also notes the 0.2 percentage point drop in the participation rate \u2014 a measure of the proportion of the population working or actively seeking work \u2014 which he says “flattered” the unemployment rate. Still, the November data were “still clearly much better than expected,” Grantham acknowledges.<\/p>\n
“While we doubt that the labour market is quite as strong as today’s headline data suggests\u2026 today’s release is still supportive of our assumption that the Bank of Canada’s rate-cutting cycle has ended,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
TD senior economist Andrew Hencic similarly writes that the job market \u201cis in better shape than most had thought,\u201d but cautions that the gains \u201ccan\u2019t be characterized as good\u201d given their concentration in part-time work and the still-elevated jobless rate.<\/p>\n
November marked the third straight monthly increase in employment, bringing total gains since September to 181,000 \u2014 a sharp reversal from the flat job market seen from January through August. The job-finding rate reached 19.6 per cent, slightly above last year\u2019s level of 18.6 per cent, with Statistics Canada noting that “increases in the unemployment rate earlier in the year had been associated with lower job-finding rates.”<\/p>\n
Job growth last month was concentrated among youth aged 15 to 24 (50,000 jobs added). Youth unemployment fell to 12.8 per cent \u2014 down more than a full percentage point from October after hitting a post-2010 high in September (excluding the pandemic months). Employment among core-aged workers was little changed, echoing October\u2019s pattern.<\/p>\n
“The jobless rate for Canadians under 25 is still elevated compared to other groups, but this was a positive development,” Brendon Bernard, senior economist at Indeed Canada, said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n
“If the improvement continues, even amid an otherwise lukewarm economic situation, it could be a sign that the slowdown in population growth from abroad is contributing to improving youth employment rates, but more data is needed to confirm the trend.”<\/p>\n
By industry, the most jobs were added in healthcare and social assistance (up 46,000, or 1.6 per cent), accommodation and food services (up 14,000 or 1.2 per cent) and natural resources (up 11,000 or 3.4 per cent). The increases in accommodation and food services were the first since January. Wholesale and retail trade, by contrast, shed 34,000 jobs, nearly reversing October\u2019s gain in the sector.<\/p>\n
Regionally, employment rose most notably in Alberta (29,000 jobs added), where the unemployment rate dropped 1.3 percentage points to 6.5 per cent \u2014 the province\u2019s lowest since March 2024. New Brunswick and Manitoba also posted gains, while Ontario and Quebec saw little net employment change. Ontario\u2019s unemployment rate, however, dipped to 7.3 per cent, largely because fewer people searched for work.<\/p>\n
Average hourly wages were up 3.6 per cent from November 2024, rising $1.27 to $37.<\/p>\n
John MacFarlane is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on X @jmacf.<\/p>\n
Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In October, Canada gained 66,600 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped 0.2 percentage points to 6.9 per cent.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[14477,51,943,62422,1700,29199,16922,114865,14476,16,16919,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-614356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-bank-of-canada","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-douglas-porter","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-jobless-rate","14":"tag-participation-rate","15":"tag-percentage-points","16":"tag-statistics-canada","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-unemployment-rate","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115668442470230844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}