Economy under Harper going nowhere fast...

Opinion

Jobs down, unemployment up: Harper fails work-seeking Canadians

Numbers are worrisome and reflect a clear, unsettling trend in the wrong direction

 

In this election year, the prime minister has some explaining to do: Canadian labour markets are in worse condition than originally imagined, according to a new report by Statistics Canada.

We knew the Canadian labour market was not in great shape.

After all, in lowering its trendsetting benchmark rate to 0.75, the Bank of Canada last week cited the slack in the Canadian labour market as one of the reasons.

But what we did not know until this week is that it’s actually worse than we thought. Not ‘far worse’, but still worse enough to give us pause and confirm our suspicions that the labour market is actually headed in the wrong direction. 

It is quite normal for Statistics Canada to revise data on a regular basis, as new information comes to light. But this is becoming a habit for this once world-respected statistical agency.

So what does the new information tell us?

First, the unemployment rate is not 6.6% but 6.7%. Not a large discrepancy, but sufficient enough to suggest that it is not going down.  By now, four years into a so-called recovery, it should be heading down, not up.

Also, the Canadian economy in 2014 only created 121,300 jobs. Initially, we were told that the Canadian economy had created 165,700 jobs.  In other words, the number of jobs created in 2014 was actually 35% lower than expected. This is certainly not welcome news. And as the effects of the oil crisis begin to be felt, expect these numbers to change dramatically for the worse.

READ MORE: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/jobs-down-unemployment-up-harper-fails-work-seeking-canadians-1.2936445