The Canadian economy added 3,200 jobs and the unemployment dropped to 6.5 per cent in April, the lowest level since October 2008, but wage growth stalled to its weakest in more than two decades, Statistics Canada said Friday.
Compared with the same time last year, there were 276,000 (+1.5 per cent) more people employed and the unemployment rate was 0.6 percentage points lower. Over the same period, the total number of hours worked rose 1.1 per cent.
However, hourly wages expanded by 0.7 per cent in April, the slowest year-over-year growth since the federal agency started collecting that data in January 1997.
“The fly in the ointment continues to be weak wage growth with year-over-year growth in average hourly earnings for permanent employees slipping to its lowest level on record (again) in April at 0.5 per cent,” RBC senior economist Nathan Janzen wrote in a research note. “The weak wage growth is in sharp contrast to what would otherwise appear to be a labour market with little or no slack remaining.”
CIBC economist Nick Exarhos said the slight growth in the number of hours worked was commensurate with the performance of the economy over the same period.
“That should alleviate some of the concerns that the Bank of Canada has on the labour market, although wages are likely to remain a concern,” Exarhos wrote.
The drop in the unemployment was due to fewer youth searching for work.
Douglas Porter, BMO chief economist, said job gains in April were heavily concentrated in public sector areas such as education (+19,000) and health care (+12,000). At the same time, the private service sector saw the biggest declines, including employment in hotels & restaurants (-12,000) and building and support services (-19,000).
Only three provinces reported any job gains last month – British Columbia, Newfoundland and tiny Prince Edward Island – but the job declines in the other seven were all quite modest in scope, Porter said.
The western province of British Columbia created the most jobs with a solid 11,300 job gain.
Here are the jobless rates last month by province (previous month in brackets):
- Newfoundland and Labrador 14.0 per cent (14.9)
- Prince Edward Island 10.3 (10.1)
- Nova Scotia 8.3 (8.6)
- New Brunswick 8.7 (8.4)
- Quebec 6.6 (6.4)
- Ontario 5.8 (6.4)
- Manitoba 5.4 (5.5)
- Saskatchewan 6.2 (6.0)
- Alberta 7.9 (8.4)
- British Columbia 5.5 (5.4)
With files from The Canadian Press
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