Preview: Due December 4 - Canada November Employment - Avoiding a fourth straight decline
We expect Canadian employment to increase by 15k in a correction from three straight declines. GDP growth is likely to be slow in Q4 due to US tariffs but is unlikely to be negative, and that argues against a negative employment trend. We expect unemployment to slip back to 6.6% from 6.7%, while remaining above September’s 6.5%.
October’s employment decline of 4.7k was modest, but with public sector employment up by 49.6k showed underlying weakness, more so than September’s 68.3k decline that was fully explained by a 70k decline in the public sector. Still, goods employment was positive in October, with the weakness coming from private sector services, in particular declines of 28.8k in wholesale and retail and 10.1k in transportation and warehousing.
In November we expect goods to slip by 10k with manufacturing vulnerable to tariffs, and the public sector to resume a negative trend with a decline of 5k. The monthly gain is likely to be more than fully explained by a rebound in private sector services. We expect a 15k rise in private sector employment with a 5k rise in self-employment offsetting a public sector dip. We expect 10k of the employment gain to come from full-time work with 5k coming from part-time.
We expect an unchanged labor force after a 28k October rise that corrected two preceding declines. This would allow a modest decline in unemployment. We expect the average hourly wage for permanent employees to return to September’s 2.3% pace from October’s 2.0%, which marched that of August. Still, that would leave four straight very subdued months, running well below inflation.
