The Canadian dollar is a little lower in Asia trade so far this session, slipping further from its overnight weakness.
There is data on the agenda, the much-watched employment report
- due Friday 8 February 2019 at 1330GMT
The headlines expected:
- Employment change 5K (prior 7.8K)
- Unemployment rate 5.7% (prior 5.6%
What to watch via RBC:
- We are forecasting a 5K increase in employment in January after a 9.3K increase in December and a massive 94.1K gain in November. Services (+67K) and manufacturing (+24K) sectors led in November, with the latter expected to fall 8K in January (overall goods sectors up 2K). We see the unemployment rate edging up from a multi-decade low to 5.7%. The release's wage growth measure slowed in H2-2018, finishing at 1.5% y/y for permanent workers in December. The BoC's preferred wage-common metric did decline in 2018 as well, but was 2.3% as of Q3, with oil producing provinces weighing. Recent BoC communication has noted a lack of "job churn" or turnover in the data, as well as high involuntary parttime employment and structural factors as contributing to slower wage growth than the 5.6% unemployment rate would suggest.
