Canada’s economy added almost one million jobs last month, as businesses reopened after COVID-19 shutdowns.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that the economy added 953,000 jobs during June, on top of the 290,000 it gained the previous month. But despite that two-month stretch, there are still 1.8 million fewer jobs in Canada today than there were in February.
The jobless rate fell to 12.3 per cent, down from the record high of 13.7 it hit in May.
The job gains were better than the 700,000 jobs that economists polled by Bloomberg were forecasting.
More than half of the new jobs came from Ontario and Quebec, which added 378,000 and 248,000 jobs, respectively. But every province added at least a small number of jobs.
Indeed, Statistics Canada said that the country’s biggest city, Toronto, was still mostly locked down during the week it conducted its jobs survey for June, so any surge in Toronto’s job numbers after the city entered Phase 2 of its reopening was excluded from this set of numbers and will likely show up in July’s data.
The jobs were fairly evenly split between full- and part-time, with 488,000 of the former and 465,000 of the latter.
At the lowest point in April, Statistics Canada says 5.5 million Canadian jobs were negatively impacted by the pandemic, with three million jobs completely gone and another 2.5 million being reduced in terms of hours or wages in some way.
By June, that first number was down by about two million, but the data agency says there are still 3.1 million workers who’ve either lost their jobs or have been otherwise negatively impacted by COVID-19.
‘Not out of the woods yet’
“Despite a lot of jobs being recouped since April, we’re not out of the woods yet,” economist Brendon Bernard at employment marketplace Indeed.com said of the numbers. Adding a million jobs in June on top of May’s gain means in broad terms Canada has “recouped about 40 per cent of initial job losses in two months [but] bringing back the other 60 per cent and mending the longer-term fallout could be more challenging.”
The pandemic disproportionately hit women’s employment, and the numbers suggest they are not recovering as quickly as male workers are.
“Some of it reflects the facts that the industries that are coming back more quickly tend to have more male employees,” Royal Bank’s deputy chief economist Dawn Desjardins said in an interview.
She notes that sectors such as retail, tourism, food and accommodation have been among the slowest to rebound. “Those are heavily female dominated and we are not seeing the same degree of recovery,” she said.
For women who make $16 an hour or less, employment is still at less than three-quarters of what it was in February. For men in that wage group, employment has bounced back to 84 per cent of its previous level.
And working parents continue to fall behind four months into the pandemic. Nearly one in seven working mothers are still getting less than half the paid work they were before. For working fathers, it’s about one in 12.
“Women are disproportionately carrying the load of unpaid labour,” Desjardins said.
She added that September will be a key month for the recovery, as schools theoretically reopening should take over some of the burden that’s currently being primarily borne by women. “What is child care going to look like in September,” she said. “It could hold back women from participating.”
Leah Nord with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce was also cautiously optimistic about the overall numbers, although she said that the hard-hit accommodation and food services industry — which still has just two-thirds of the jobs it had in February — faces an uphill climb to full recovery.
“We still have a long way to go before we return to a fully engaged workforce,” she said. “Any recovery will be underpinned by how effectively we get Canadians back to work.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
