While Canadians were constantly goaded into a state of economic anxiety over the past year, as the dust settled, it was pretty clear the country was coming out of 2019 in a surprisingly healthy state.
Still, at the beginning of December, just when things were going good and following a year of stunning job creation and unemployment near record lows, the twenty-teens closed with a new piece of ominous economic data that led many to wonder whether the trajectory of the Canadian economy had changed.
On the same day the U.S. announced it had cranked out more than 266,000 jobs, pushing unemployment to 3.5 per cent, Canada headed in the opposite direction.
According to Statistics Canada’s last Labour Force Survey, the number of Canadian jobs plunged by more than 71,000 — the biggest one-month employment loss since 2009, when the economy was still in the throes of the Great Recession.
Unemployment rose to 5.9 per cent, up from 5.5 per cent in October.
The data was especially shocking because forecasts from economists at the big financial institutions had predicted a net increase of 10,000 jobs.
Staggering losses
As some observers pointed out at the time, with the Canadian population being about 10 per cent of that of the U.S., it was roughly the equivalent of a staggering 700,000 job losses south of the border. On the other hand, as the Wall Street Journal reminded us, Canada’s 5.9 per cent unemployment rate would have been 4.7 per cent if calculated using U.S. methods.
The Canadian job decline did not come completely out of the blue. After strong job creation in August and September, October’s data also showed a slight drop in jobs.
The question raised by government critics and commentators in the days after the report was whether the new data was somehow a statistical misreading in a data collection system that is notoriously volatile from month to month. Or, alternatively, if something important had changed.
Was it a blip? Or is it a trend?
A truck passes an employee walkway at the GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., where the operation’s closure will contribute to a loss in manufacturing jobs in December. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)
A partial answer, at least, will come this week when Statistics Canada releases its final data for 2019 to include the month of December.
As an economic indicator, the Labour Force Survey has some important advantages.
One way of looking at it is that rather than being the proverbial canary in the coal mine, employment data is the actual coal mine. Because what better measure of the economy is there than whether people are working and earning?
Employment data is about the closest we have to a reading of now. Gathered through public interviews of households in days before its release, the Labour Force Survey takes the current pulse of the economy in a way other data cannot.
But that immediacy comes with some flaws.
Room for error
“While we are confident in our methodology, there is variability in the Labour Force Survey estimates, reflecting the nature of the survey,” explained Statistics Canada labour market economist Bertrand Ouellet-Léveillé.
Statisticians understand this in a way that most of us do not. But even with a big sample size, there remains large room for error.
To a statistician, there are about two chances out of three that jobs losses were in a wide range around the minus 71,000 figure, Ouellet-Léveillé said. But there is a one-third chance it is wrong altogether.
That’s why data for a single month should never be read alone, he said, and why it should be used with other sources of information, such as job vacancy and wage data.
Certainly, business leaders have consistently complained that they have hundreds of thousands of jobs still vacant. And wages, rising at 4.5 per cent, or double the rate of inflation, seem to indicate workers remain in demand.
Some blamed the size of November’s job slump on public-sector workers who were no longer needed after the fall federal election. A sharp drop in manufacturing jobs is more ominous, but with demand high, both groups may soon be drawn back into the workforce.
And then there’s inflation. Shortly after that last jobs release, rising prices told a completely different story for the Bank of Canada and the Canadian dollar.
When those jobs numbers were released a month ago today, many analysts took it as a warning that the economy was in trouble. “Biggest jobs loss since 2009 test Canadian resolve on rates,” blared a headline from the business news service Bloomberg.
The Canadian dollar fell.
Top 10 and rising
Many saw the plunge in employment as a sign that the Bank of Canada would have to cut rates to boost the economy. But now a month later, almost no one thinks Canada’s chief central banker Stephen Poloz, or his replacement, taking over in June, will cut interest rates in 2020.
Not only did the dollar begin to rise after the recent inflation numbers, most Canadians would probably be surprised to learn that the loonie was one of the developed world’s powerhouse currencies in 2019, beating out the U.S. greenback by five per cent.
Many other indicators tell us that Canada remains strong. Just last week, the World Economic League Table showed that not only has the Canadian economy knocked out South Korea to once again make it into the global Top 10, but in the coming decade, Canada is expected to climb over the backs of Italy and Brazil to reach No. 8.
Despite signs of an otherwise booming economy, Statistics Canada said Quebec alone lost more than 45,000 jobs in November due to a fall in manufacturing, accommodation and food services. (Christinne Muschi/Reuters)
“Despite the fact that the economy is doing reasonably well, with some regional exceptions, [and] despite the fact that the Canadian middle-class income has been better and more stable than most middle classes around the world at the moment … there is a kind of anxiety out there,” Keith Banting, a public policy specialist at Queen’s University, said in an interview last September.
Last month, Conservative warnings of a made-in-Canada recession helped keep that anxiety alive. And while most domestic and international analysts say the Canadian economy will continue to grow in 2020, a November slump in employment that expands from a blip into a downward spiral would be dangerous signal.
So was it a blip? Or is it a trend? This week’s employment statistics will help settle that debate.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
