🇨🇦Cable FX Macro Weekly Note: Canada Labour Report

**As seen in Risk In The Week report 02/04/23, cablefxm.co.uk/reports

The December labour report surprised to the upside as the economy added 104.0K jobs vs the median survey of 5.0K and the prior 10.1K. The unemployment rate fell to 5.0%, below expectations of 5.2%, the lowest since July. Looking at sectors, service producers led gains in the month with 81.7K jobs added, goods producing sector added 22.2K jobs, the former marked the fourth consecutive month of job creation. The public sector shed 18.4K jobs, following a prior decline of 24.9K jobs. The latest survey compiled by Bloomberg showed economists projecting a 5.4% unemployment rate for the first quarter of the year, this was revised lower from a prior 5.5%. The desk at NB said that last report was suspiciously strong, and a trend reversal is expected. They see the January headline contracting by 20K and noted that this would translate into an uptick to 5.2% in the unemployment rate from a current 5.0%. Analysts at RBC expect the figure to rise modestly by 5,000 and the unemployment rate to 5.1%, however, they note that this would still be a multi-decade low jobless rate. RBC also noted that there are signs of cooling in the Canadian labour market as job postings begin to edge lower and hours worked decreased in December. They added that the BoC’s BOS showed businesses plans to add staff falling.