I wish to focus your attention not only on bad news but also on good news. I found the following and another article recently published in the Globe and Mail very interesting. The first one, which I transcribed below, is encouraging for our economy in general and depicts a positive outlook for the future. Remember, Canada has shielded better the recession than our American neighbours and even better than EU countries, with rare exceptions. If we continue to be prudent and visionary, we can be well positioned in the future to be a major player in creating good, solid economic policy for the entire world.
"Canada's economy is creating more secure, higher paying jobs, suggesting companies are responding to a more entrenched recovery and preparing to power it forward.
Employers hired more workers than anticipated in December, Statistics Canada said Friday, creating a net 22,000 new positions, though not enough to nudge the unemployment rate down from 7.6 per cent. More important, the increase was concentrated in full-time private sector jobs, after several months in which gains were largely limited to part-time work, fragile government jobs and self-employment.
The December gain capped a year that saw the economy recoup all of the jobs lost during the recession, making Canada the first Group of Seven country to return to pre-crisis employment levels. December also marked the labour market's best performance in four months. The economy created a total of 368,500 jobs in 2010, Statistics Canada said, a 2.2-per-cent increase in the work force after a 1.1-per-cent decline in 2009.
Significantly, December's showing suggests companies are more confident in the outlook for the Canadian and U.S. economies, and positioning themselves to play a more meaningful role. The U.S. economy has been showing signs of picking up, although the American labour market remains weak.
The restoration of more full-time private sector jobs means a greater share of new positions are the type that offer workers better job security and thus a greater sense of financial well-being, as well as bigger paycheques to spend throughout the economy.
"Job gains will be smaller than they were at the start of the recovery, but the quality and the composition will improve," said Pascal Gauthier, a senior economist with Toronto-Dominion Bank. "The scenario of a double dip is becoming more marginal, and that positive snowball effect of income growth and job growth is becoming more entrenched. There are headwinds out there, but you would need another tremendous negative shock to tilt the economy backward again."
Early last fall, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney lamented that only about half of the job growth since the recession was in the private sector and many jobs were "involuntary part-time." Indeed, total hours worked have not returned to precrisis levels, and much of the job creation last year was in government jobs or came from self-employment.
But Friday's report showed full-time employment rose by 38,000 positions, the fourth increase in five months, compared with a drop of 16,100 in part-time work. Businesses added a net 52,500 workers, led by a record-breaking surge of 65,700 manufacturing jobs and 44,500 transportation and warehousing jobs.
By contrast, just 7,400 new positions were added in the public sector, which will likely see tiny increases or even contractions from this point on, given the pressure on governments throughout the developed world to attack their budget deficits.
Compared with the eye-popping numbers seen in the first six months of 2010, job gains could be too incremental to keep up with the growth of the labour force, meaning that a jobless rate described by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as still too high could be relatively static for months.
The unemployment rate has fallen from 8.4 per cent in December, 2009, but is well above the 6.8-per-cent level of late 2008.
Nonetheless, analysts said the private-sector-led hiring in December points to a recovery that is becoming more sustainable.
The impressive increase in factory jobs is the latest sign manufacturers are adapting to the strength of the Canadian dollar, which rose after the jobs report and has been hovering around parity with its U.S. counterpart for months.
Mr. Carney is widely expected to keep his benchmark interest rate at 1 per cent at his Jan. 18 meeting, but the report intensified speculation that he may step off the sidelines and raise rates sooner than previously thought, perhaps as early as March.
As always, there were caveats.
Economists at Scotia Capital Inc. questioned whether such a huge rise in Canadian factory employment was really possible, given the tentative environment for exports to the United States.
And while the world's biggest economy is certainly showing signs of improvement, a U.S. Labour Department report Friday showed that it produced far fewer jobs in December than Wall Street analysts were hoping for.
In Canada, hiring may have run its course for now, if companies heed policy makers' calls to turn their attention in the year ahead to improving their competitiveness and productivity.
Kriska Transportation president Mark Seymour said his trucking company shared in last month's record Canadian job gains in transportation and warehousing. Kriska, based in Prescott, Ont., has added 10 to 15 full-time drivers to its staff of 500 in recent months to meet a jump in demand from its manufacturing customers in Central Canada.
But like a lot of Canadian businesspeople, Mr. Seymour remains wary about what's ahead and is being very prudent about adding new employees.
"There's been so much lost margin in our industry that we can't afford to make a prediction and be wrong," he explained. "Right now, we're just being very conservative and cautious."
Similarly, parcel-shipping company Canpar Transport of Mississauga, Ont., also enjoyed a strong December, benefiting from better-than-expected holiday retail sales. However, president Jim Houston said the company is adding workers because it's taking business from rivals, not because he has become unwaveringly confident in the economy.
Another key barometer of the prospects for companies and the labour market comes Monday, when the Bank of Canada releases its latest survey of executives.
But according to the head of one job placement firm, even full-time private sector jobs – welcome as December's increase may be – aren't as secure as they used to be.
"Full-time jobs are becoming less and less permanent," said Jim Geraghty, president of Happen, a Toronto-based network for unemployed mid- to senior-level managers and executives. "So we strongly encourage people to look at their next position as if they're being self-employed, because it's likely going to be no more than a three-year stint."
With a report from Barrie McKenna in Ottawa"
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