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Canwest News Service
There was a splash of cold water on the optimism of many economic analysts Friday, as employment reports in both Canada and the U.S. suggested that the nascent economic recovery continues to be hesitant.
While there's no change in North America's underlying trend of improvement, it's showing more of a stop-and-go pattern than some hoped for.
U.S. payrolls, expected to be flat or maybe slightly positive for December, showed a substantial loss of 85,000 jobs.
Ironically for those who had been hoping for the first positive American employment report since the that country's slump began at the end of 2007, this wish was fulfilled — sort of. November's report was revised upward to a tiny gain of 4,000 jobs from the loss of 11,000 originally shown.
U.S. unemployment remained unchanged at 10 per cent, a tick below the high of 10.1 per cent in October.
Looking past the monthly lurches, the trend of slowing U.S. job loss remained intact, with an average of 69,000 jobs per month lost in the fourth quarter, far better than the hemorrhage of 199,000 in the third, noted Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight.
It's likely that the numbers will turn positive in the current quarter, he said.
In Canada, where there was much less suspense since job growth began last summer, the picture remains far brighter than it is south of the border.
True, employment growth halted in December, with a small loss of 2,600. But the big picture remained upbeat. This country has created 91,000 jobs since July, leaving December's modest downturn as a mere pause after November's blazing gain of 79,100.
As in the U.S., Canada's unemployment rate of 8.5 per cent was unchanged. It had peaked at 8.7 per cent in August.
Even that peak rate isn't bad by comparison with recent history, points out Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns.
In fact, it's close to the average unemployment rate in Canada over the past three decades. If you look at the past two recessions, unemployment hit 12.1 per cent in 1992 and 13 per cent in 1982.
Looking back over 2009, there's not much question that Canada has had an easier time of it.
The U.S. suffered twice as big a drop in employment during the past year, down by 3.1 per cent compared with this country's loss of 1.4 per cent, and even that understates the suffering south of the border, since the U.S. endured big job losses in the previous year.
The percentage of adults with jobs tells the same story of sharply contrasting experience in the two job markets.
In the 1990s, this measure was 3.6 percentage points lower in Canada, but now it's a record 3.2 percentage points higher, notes Porter.
Within Canada, there's yet another counterintuitive development, the remarkable success of Quebec in cushioning the blow of a severe recession, helped along by a big infrastructure program and the absence of auto plants.
In past decades, Quebec's normal position was as laggard among Canada's big provinces, growing less vigorously than Ontario or Alberta during good times and suffering more during slumps. Not this time.
But since the beginning of Canada's recession in October 2008, Quebec has suffered the least of Canada's major provinces, experiencing a loss of employment that's proportionately less than one-third that of Ontario and less than one-half that of Alberta or British Columbia, calculates economist Pascal Gauthier at the Toronto-Dominion Bank.
Last month, this charmed life continued. Quebec gained 8,000 jobs, second only to Alberta's increase of 13,900, while Ontario lost 16,600 and British Columbia edged down a tiny amount.
Quebec's unemployment rate bumped up to 8.4 per cent from 8.1 per cent last month despite the job growth, but only because more people jumped into the job market.
