2014′s job gains coming from full-time positions
On the surface, the latest Canadian jobs data are mildly disappointing: a slight reduction in the number of people working in December relative to November, which was more than offset by a decline in the labour force. Yet a deeper dive into the numbers — and a willingness to ignore the month-to-month changes in favour of the (slightly) less volatile annual changes — shows solid growth in the number of people working, with more than all of 2014′s job gains coming from full-time positions.
Moreover, despite a higher headline unemployment rate, the share of Canadians with a job remains significantly higher than in its southern neighbour, while the gap between the current employment rate and the pre-crisis norm is still much smaller.
Perhaps the biggest testament to the noisiness of the Canadian data is that, in September, we noted that more than 80 per cent of Canada’s net job growth over the previous 12 months had come from additional part-time workers, while now we can write that the number of Canadian part-time employees fell in 2014. This is all the more impressive given the commentary about Canada’s exposure to the collapse in oil prices that has occurred since then.
According to the latest figures, the number of full-time workers grew by 1.3 per cent over the past year. (That compares with about 2.3 per cent in the US, for those keeping score.) Young Canadians have done the best, with full-time employment among those aged 15 to 24 up about 3.5 per cent. The number of Canadian men over the age of 25 with a full-time job rose by 1.6 per cent. Canadian women, who have done relatively less well in recent years, nevertheless experienced full-time job growth of about 0.5 per cent in 2014.
Total employment in Canada grew about 1 per cent, while the total number of Canadians grew by 1.2 per cent. Young people, who only account for about 18 per cent of the population surveyed, nevertheless accounted for about a third of all the jobs added in 2014. That suggests a relatively healthy economy considering that the young and inexperienced are usually the most likely to bear the brunt of business cutbacks.