Canada’s jobs report just crushed expectations.
The latest figures from Statistics Canada showed that the Canadian labor market added 53,700 jobs in December.
Meanwhile, economists had forecast that the economy lost 2,500 jobs, according to the Bloomberg consensus.
Notably, while the past few months have seen huge gains in part-time jobs, December’s gains were primarily in full-time employment. Statistics Canada reports that full-time jobs rose by 81,300, while part-time jobs dropped by 27,600.
Moreover, employment increased significantly among women aged 25 to 54, with employment rising by 31,000. Other demographic groups saw little overall change. And employment increased in both public and private sectors, but self-employment was little changed.
"The massive 54,000 increase in employment in December continued the barely believable run of job gains over the past few months," wrote Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics, after the report.
"As Stats Can noted, the economy added 108,000 jobs in the fourth quarter, the most since the second quarter of 2010. This is very hard to square with the incoming data on real activity, however, with the decline in October monthly GDP suggesting that fourth-quarter GDP growth was around 1% annualized. If both are correct, that must mean Canada is experiencing a big slump in productivity," he added.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.9% from the prior month's 6.8%, as expected. And the labor force participation rate rose to 65.8%, up from 65.6%.
The Canadian dollar is up by 0.2% at 1.3198 per US dollar as of 8:51 a.m. ET.
