The Canadian economy continues to create jobs at a good pace, but the number of workers is growing even faster. As a result, the unemployment rate is not decreasing. It remained unchanged at 5.5% in August, despite adding 40,000 jobs.
In Quebec, there were 14,800 more jobs in August than the previous month, including nearly 11,000 full-time jobs. The unemployment rate fell slightly, from 4.5% in July to 4.3% in August. In the Montreal metropolitan area, the unemployment rate fell from 5.3% in July to 5.2% in August. In Toronto, the unemployment rate is up slightly, from 6.5% in July to 6.6% in August.
The job market remains very tight in the Quebec metropolitan region, where the unemployment rate rose from 3.5% in July to 3.2% in August. The Quebec region ranks third among those with the lowest unemployment rate in Canada, behind Sherbrooke and Kelowna, in British Columbia.
Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard had a nuanced reaction to the drop in the unemployment rate. The “composition” of the approximately 15,000 jobs created is “mixed”, he said on the sidelines of the CAQ caucus meeting in Saguenay.
“There is a lot of job creation in the public sector and at the self-employed level, so the composition is a little less good than the overall figure,” he estimated.
“For Quebec, this is good job creation,” underlined the minister. And this is equivalent to what is happening in Ontario and Canada. »
In Quebec, the average hourly wage is up 3.4% in August on an annual basis. This is a faster increase than in July (2.8%). The most recent inflation reading in Quebec is 3.9%.
For the country as a whole, the increase in average hourly wages is 4.9% in August, following a 5% increase in July.
The working-age population is growing at a record high, so job creation still lags population growth.
According to Statistics Canada, the population aged 15 and over increased by 103,000 in August alone. Since the start of 2023, it has increased by an average of 81,000 per month, compared to an average of 38,000 per month between 2017 and 2019.
To prevent the job market from deteriorating given this rate of population growth, 50,000 jobs would need to be created per month, according to Statistics Canada.
That won’t happen, according to National Bank economists Matthieu Arseneau and Alexandra Ducharme. Job creation cannot be maintained at such a pace for the months to come. Corporate profits are down 26% since the start of the year and compensation is on the rise, they say.
“Companies may therefore have to make difficult decisions,” according to them.
The most recent portrait of the labor market does not make the task any easier for the Bank of Canada either. Job creation continues to surprise and the number of hours worked increased by 0.5% in August. The average hourly wage continues to grow solidly, at a pace inconsistent with a return to the 2% inflation target, according to the central bank.
“From the point of view of controlling inflation, the new acceleration in the growth of salaries of permanent employees is worrying,” also estimates economist Marc Desormeaux of Desjardins. In addition to the overall increase, many sectors saw a re-acceleration [of wages] last month,” he says.
Most economists still expect the pause in interest rate hikes to continue, because economic growth is slowing.
The proportion of workers usually working exclusively from home stood at 13.6% in August 2023, down 3.2 percentage points from August 2022.
Statistics Canada surveyed teleworkers on which days of the week they go to work, with the aim of helping businesses and policymakers predict peak periods for public transit and other services.
The first days of the week are the most popular. Among all workers who had a hybrid work arrangement in August, most usually went to their workplace on Tuesday (50.2%), Wednesday (51.4%) or Thursday (48.3 %), and fewer of them usually went to their workplace on Monday (42.4%), Friday (37.1%), Saturday (3.8%) or Sunday ( 2.8%).
