Job numbers fell 70,300 last month, partially offset by 27,500
Canadians declaring themselves self-employed. From October 2008 to
October 2009 the Canadian economy has shed 503,500 employee positions.
Jobs for women and youths were particularly hard hit over the past
month, accounting for the
bulk of October’s job losses. This should come as no surprise as
Stephen Harper's Conservatives only
really care about the welfare of their primary grassroots voting base:
suburban and rural, middle aged,
White Males in English Canada; women, visible minorities, aboriginals,
Quebecois, city dwellers,
and youth must play second fiddle to Stephen Harper's aforementioned
primary constituency.

While Alberta Redneck Stockwell Day was quick to declare the recession
over last July, Canadian families suffering from job losses were
looking for a real job creation plan.

The GDP numbers released last Friday showed a decline in economic
activity in August, contradicting Conservative claims that 90 percent
of the economic stimulus package was already underway and creating
jobs.

-Robert James (Auld Bob) Peffers

Jobless rate spikes as manufacturing hit hard
Iain Marlow
Business Reporter
Published On Fri Nov 6 2009

The job numbers for October are out and they are bleak.

After two months of moderate growth, employment across the country
dropped by 43,200 jobs, all of them part time, Statistics Canada said
on Friday.

The drop-off pushes Canada's unemployment rate up 0.2 per cent to 8.6
per cent, a number that many predict will continue to climb until it
hits almost 10 per cent in 2010. This erases the positive growth in
September of around 30,000 jobs and demonstrates that employers are
still hesitant to take on new hires in this dismal economic
environment.

Down south, the news was even more grim, with the United States'
unemployment rate already reaching into the double digits at 10.2 per
cent, the highest since April 1983.

In Canada, most of the month's disappointing decline came from retail,
wholesale, natural resources, and "other services," and the data,
contained in Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey, showed that
women aged 25 and older and youths between 15 and 24 accounted for all
of the job losses.

"October was a reality check for a Canadian labour market that had
been seeing a lot of hiring without much to show for it in terms of
production," wrote Avery Shenfeld, CIBC World Markets' chief
economist. "October's report hinted that the earlier run-up may have,
in part, been statistical noise... Put the last three months together,
and the trend shows very small net hiring on average, a result that is
much more consistent with the limited growth we've thus far seen in
economic output."

"Today's release of negative job numbers for October undoes much of
the surprisingly strong reported improvement in September," said Erin
Weir, an economist with the United Steelworkers, in a morning note.

On the thin plus side, construction jobs were up, as were
transportation and warehousing, while the manufacturing sector
continued to fare poorly. "The ongoing pressures to Canadian
manufacturing remain evident as inventories continue to be drawn down
and firms remain hesitant about boosting production," TD Bank
economist Grant Bishop wrote in a note.

The damage was also worse out west, with 15,000 jobs lost in Alberta,
which has suffered the steepest rate of decline of all the provinces
since the economic crash, and a decline of 13,000 in British Columbia.

"Other pockets of employment growth were construction, education and
health care, which supports the notion that government stimulus is
currently the only job creator," Weir wrote. "However, a declining
number of public-sector employees contradicts this hypothesis."

Rising unemployment in the early stages of a timid recovery from
recession is not considered unusual, but the October data revealed
unusual weakness given the hopeful signals of the previous two months.

Not only did 43,200 jobs vanish into thin air in October – the result
would have been worse without the pickup of 27,500 in self-employment
during the month.

That meant there were 70,700 fewer actual employees in October –
45,200 fewer in the private sector, and 25,600 less in the public
sector.

In a weak economy, economists discount self-employment gains as mostly
involuntary, the result of enterprising Canadians who have tried but
cannot find regular employment.

Since employment in Canada peaked in October 2008, the economy has
shed around 400,000 jobs. But the latest numbers, Weir writes, show
the first full year of employment data since the economic crash took
hold. And the conclusions are not positive.

"A sectoral breakdown implies a disproportionately large loss of
relatively good jobs," Weir writes. "More than half of the employment
decline, 218,000, was in manufacturing. Construction and other goods-
producing industries eliminated a further 112,000 jobs. The entire
service sector shrank by 70,000."

Not all the details in the October data were gloomy, however.

Statistics Canada noted that all of the job losses were part-time, and
that, including self-employment, there was a net increase of 16,500
full-time jobs.

As well, hourly wages were 3.3 per cent higher than a year ago, well
above Canada's official inflation rate.

But that's where the good news ended. The agency said the October data
pushes the job loss total since October 2008, when the global
recession began in Canada, to 400,000, or 2.3 per cent of the labour
force.

The employment decline in the private sector has been more
precipitous, a 4.1 per cent fall.

"Since October 2008, employment has fallen in most industries, with
the steepest declines in manufacturing (-11 per cent), natural
resources (-11 per cent), construction (-5.8 per cent), and
transportation and warehousing (-5.8 per cent),`` the agency said in a
note.

On the plus side, construction jobs edged up, as did transportation
and warehousing, while the weak manufacturing sector was mostly
unchanged.

Regionally, Alberta, British Columbia and Newfoundland suffered the
greatest number of job losses proportionally.

With files from The Canadian Press