Canada’s economy added 39,800 jobs last month, as a surge in hiring for full-time work pushed the jobless rate down to its lowest rate on record, 5.1 per cent.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that more than 135,000 people found full-time work during the month. That more than offset a decline of 96,000 part-time positions.
The jobless rate inched down for the third month in a row, settling at the lowest point it’s been since comparable record-keeping began in 1976.
May’s hiring surge adds to the expansion that Canada’s economy has seen in recent months. After shedding more than three million jobs in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s job market has slowly and steadily recovered.
Booming demand for workers
By November 2021, Canada finally had the same number of workers it had before the pandemic. When May’s numbers are included, it now has half a million more than it did then.
The balance between job vacancies and workers has almost completely shifted from one of imbalance to one where employers can’t find enough people to work.
“As we commence the ritual of filling patios and hit the road for overdue vacations, employers continue to search for workers to meet heightened demand,” TD Bank economist James Orlando said of the numbers. “This has job vacancy rates at record levels, making it clear that the Canadian economy is operating beyond full employment.”
Serving staff are shown at a Canadian Brewhouse’s location in Victoria. The nationwide chain of restaurants has hired 800 new people in recent months, to meet consumer demand for dining out. (Mike McArthur/CBC)
Statistics Canada says the ratio of unemployed people to job vacancies has reached an all-time low of 1.2.
As the vice-president of human resources at The Canadian Brewhouse, a chain of restaurants with 42 locations across Canada, James Martyn knows first-hand how tight the labour market is right now.
Like many hospitality business, Brewhouse shrank its operations in the pandemic, but in recent months the chain has started to ramp up again, to match consumer demand for dining out.
Even with competitive wages and regularly scheduled raises, Martyn says it’s a challenge to maintain and grow staffing, but he’s pleased the chain has managed to hire about 800 new people in the past two months, including at a brand new location in Victoria which boasts the largest rooftop patio in Western Canada.
“A lot of people are, even if they are continuing to go back to work, they’re going for places where they can work from home,” he said in an interview. ” I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But it does challenge business operators, especially if you have a business like hospitality where there is no such thing as work from home.”
That demand for workers is pushing wages up, too. The data agency says average hourly wages have risen by $1.18 in the past year, to $31.12 an hour. That’s an increase of 3.9 per cent. While an impressive clip by historic standards, it’s still well short of the country’s official inflation rate of 6.8 per cent.
Unprecedented leverage
Workers have unprecedented leverage at the moment, and many of them are seeking out higher paying positions — and getting them.
Ellen Yifan Chen was a lawyer at a major firm in Quebec who recently made the leap to a new job as general counsel at a technology company based in Montreal.
She was compelled to switch by the same factors that drive many people, including flexibility, new challenges, and the ability to work from her home in Quebec City. But ultimately, the dollars and cents were a major difference maker.
Ellen Yifan Chen recently moved to a new job at a tech company after working at a law firm based in a different city. (Genevieve Poulin/CBC)
“I did succeed in having an increase to my salary as well as a signing bonus,” Chen said in an interview. “I would say that it was a big motivating factor for me to finally take the jump.
As a lawyer at a major firm, Chen said she was told for years to expect her compensation to take a dip should she decide to go somewhere else, but she says she’s noticed a sea change in her industry of late.
“Since the last six months, I have been hearing offers right out of the gate from recruiters that are either matching or higher than my salary that I was making before,” she said.
“Lots of my friends are also changing jobs. I looked at LinkedIn almost every day, and somebody [was] switching jobs.”
Higher wages and plentiful job options are great news for workers, but less so for central bankers tasked with reining in runaway inflation.
“It is an unwelcome sign for the Bank of Canada as higher wages push up consumer demand and thus inflation,” said Jay Zhao-Murray, an analyst at foreign exchange firm Monex.
“A tight labour market where workers have more bargaining power points to yet higher wage growth down the line. Without some slowing in wage growth, central bankers will continue to worry that the hot labour market is making their job of bringing inflation back down even harder.”
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.
