Friday, August 15, 2014

July 2014 Canadian Jobs Numbers Revised Upward

So the previously reports July 2014 jobs numbers weren't as bad as previously declared by Statscan with 42,000 jobs gained rather than 200 in their revision released today.

However, the report was still mediocre overall despite the overall job number gain. The number of part-time job numbers stayed at 60,000 created, but the full-time job losses were reduced from 60,000 to 18,000. So full-time jobs still lost, although we created a bucket full of part-time jobs. Is Canada becoming a nation of part-time jobs? It would seem so, although perhaps it is more that places like Ontario are awash in part-time jobs and week on full-time jobs.

Rarely does Canadian economic news make doomster site Zero Hedge, but this revision did. From Zero Hedge's post:

  • Self employment fell 37K in July from 23.4K in prior month; self employment was originally reported as -29.2K
In other words, Canada mysterioualy had a swing of over 67K self-employed jobs in the month. Congratulations.
And so on. The bottom line: it is increasingly becoming the case that "unpleasant" official economic numbers are released, they show ugly "recessionary" data, and are subsequently revised much higher to stem the public outcry as analysts scream "bloody recession." 
The fact the shift was in self employment is pretty shady. Someone declaring themselves self-employed and full-time self-employed isn't economically the same thing as getting a full-time job with an existing firm. Anyways, it will be interesting to see how GDP growth for Ontario and Canada correlates with the overall employment numbers, especially the shift to part-time from full-time employment.

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