Canadian Employment Report Better Than Expected
The employment report from Canada was released a while ago. At first glance, it doesn’t looks particularly positive, but it was if you look into the details. The participation rate increased by 2 points but the unemployment rate remained unchanged. The other details are positive too; just have a look for yourself at the table below:
Canadian Economic Data | Actual | Expected | Previous |
Unemployment Rate | 5.8% | 5.8% | 5.8% |
Participation Rate | 65.8% | 65.6% | 65.6% |
Average Hourly Earnings | 2.2% | 1.7% | 1.8% |
Employment Change | 55.9k | 0.6k | 66.8k |
Full-Time Employment | 67.4k | 0.8k | 30.9k |
As you can see, all the actual figures are green, meaning they’re better than expectations. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.8% but that’s a positive thing after the participation rate increased by two points. This means that the unemployment should have fallen by 2 points if the participation rate remained unchanged.
Full time employment came higher than last month and employment in general came much better than expectations. USD/CAD declined around 60 pips as the initial reaction from the US employment report was negative, but the Canadian report also had some positive impact on the CAD.