Amid unprecedented immigration levels, we must reassess how we consider monthly job numbers.
If you were told a country created 40,000 jobs in a month, you still wouldn’t know much about the state of that country’s economy. To know whether that 40,000 number was good or bad, you would need to know the overall population of the country, whether that population was growing or shrinking, and how rapidly those changes were taking place.
If a country with a stable population of 2 million people created 40,000 jobs in a month, that would be a significant gain. By contrast, if a country with a population of 1 billion people with monthly population growth of 1 million people created 40,000 jobs, it would be almost meaningless. Unfortunately, since we are so used to looking at the top-line number in isolation, we can get a skewed picture of things.
And that brings us to the jobs report released by Statistics Canada. While most of the focus was on the 40,000 jobs created last month, Stats Canada noted that population growth is in fact outpacing job growth:
“Employment increased by 40,000 (+0.2%) in August, following little change in July. Since January 2023, employment has increased by 174,000 (+0.9%)—or by 25,000 on average per month.
Employment gains have continued to occur in the context of record-high population growth. The employment rate—the proportion of the population aged 15 years and older who are employed—can help assess whether employment growth is keeping pace with population growth.
The employment rate fell 0.1 percentage points to 61.9% in August. It was down 0.6 percentage points compared with January 2023, but little changed from August 2022.
The population aged 15 and older in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) grew by 103,000 (+0.3%) in August, and by 81,000 on average per month since the start of 2023. Given this pace of population growth, employment growth of approximately 50,000 per month is required for the employment rate to remain constant.”
So there you have it. Canada needs to be creating 50,000 jobs a month to keep up with massive population growth from immigration. On average, we’re creating just half of that. Even the 40,000 jobs created last month represents our country falling further behind. Keep this in mind whenever you hear the Liberal government trying to talk up job growth in Canada.
Spencer Fernando
