Canada January employment change -200K vs -121.5 K estimate

• Prior report 54.7K
• Employment change -200K versus -121.5K estimate
• Unemployment rate 6.5% versus 5.9% estimate (revised to 6.0%). The pre-pandemic level was 5.7%
• full-time -83K vs 123K last month.
• part-time --117K vs -68K last month
• private sector employment felt -206K
• public sector employment rose 6K
• average hourly wages grew 2.4% YoY down from 2.7% in December (and November0
• services jobs -223K vs +10K last month
• goods producing 23K vs +44K last month
• participation rate 65.0% versus 65.4% last month (revised from 65.3% previous)

Highlights:

• All of the employment decline in January was among private sector employees (-206,000; -1.6%), reflecting large losses in the accommodation and food services; and information, culture and recreation industries. Following the decline, the number of employees in the private sector was essentially the same as in February 2020.
• Part-time employment fell below its pre-pandemic level after having recovered at the end of 2021, while full-time employment remained higher than in February 2020.
• The January 2022 year-over-year change average hourly wages of 2.4% was similar to the average annual wage growth of 2.5% observed in the five years from 2015 to 2019.
• The Omicron variant of COVID-19 spread across the country, absences due to illness or disability reached record highs in January
• The unemployment rate - 6.5% in January up 0.5 percentage points from December 2021 - was the first increase since the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2021
• The adjusted unemployment rate—which includes people who wanted a job but did not look for one—was 8.5% in January 2022.
• Accommodation and food service jobs felt -113 K largest decline since April 2020
• information, culture, and recreation felt -48K
• retail jobs felt -26K

The USDCAD has moved higher on the combination of the weaker Canada and stronger US jobs. The USDCAD is testing the swing highs from last week at 1.27958. Moving above that level would next target 1.28132 which was the January high.