Canada job market not strong enough-TD

Canada, 7th January: Canada’s job market is not as strong as it appears, states the latest report from Toronto-Dominion Bank economists.

Canadian economy has, no doubt, recovered majority of the jobs lost during recession, but the job growth in the nation is still a far cry considering the underlying employment market weaknesses.

According to Sonya Gulati and Derek Burleton, economists with TD Bank, the conditions of employment market in Canada are not robust enough even though Canada has been successful in creating around 440,000 jobs since July 2009, and it has created around 350,000 jobs through November last year exceeding even the expected forecasts.

The economists maintain that the past year had been a good year in terms of job growth in Canada, but, not the best year. And this is especially true for the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia where the employment growth is a still to reach the pre-recession levels.

Moreover, the employment participation rate for the workers has not reached the peak levels before the onset of recession.

The rate of unemployment in Canada is still staying around 7.6 percent, the figures revealed by the Statistics Canada for the month of December state.

Presently, Canada has created more part-time jobs as compared to the full-time jobs. So, the result is that Canada is having higher number of part-time workers and self-employed workers than in October 2008, the report maintains.

Another fact that points out towards the weaker job market in Canada is that Canadians have been looking to get employed at low-paying jobs resulting in keeping the wages down. Also, majority of new jobs created in Canada have been in public sector apart from self-employment and the private sector is still lagging behind around 106,000 jobs created before the recession.

Meanwhile, the best performance in terms of employment creation in Canada has been witnessed in the provinces of Prince Edward Island, Quebec, B.C.(British Columbia), Manitoba and Newfoundland in the year 2010.

The other Canadian provinces had not witnessed any significant changes in the Canada job market, the report reiterates.

TD economists maintain that the weakness in the employment market in Ontario can be attributed to problems in the manufacturing sector.