After suffering from the effects of the Omicron variant in January, the job market recovered spectacularly in February and Quebec returned to the lowest unemployment rate in Canada, at 4.5%.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
The rebound in employment was expected, but it exceeded all forecasts. With 337,000 more jobs in February, the Canadian labor market as a whole has recouped the jobs lost during the pandemic. The unemployment rate is down 1% and stands at 5.5%, very close to its historic low of 5.4%.
The Quebec economy is showing 82,000 more jobs. The accommodation and catering, culture and leisure, and wholesale and retail trade sectors, which had suffered the most from the health measures, were the ones with the most hiring in February.
The unemployment rate in the Montreal region fell below the 5% mark, to 4.9% in February.
Sharp increase in the average salary in Quebec
While the average hourly wage is up 3.1% over the past year in Canada and the purchasing power of Canadian consumers is eroding, Quebec is doing better.
The average hourly wage has increased by 5.9% over the past year in Quebec, underlines the economist of the Institut du Québec, Simon Savard. “This higher wage growth in Quebec than in Canada has been noticed for several months already,” he specifies.
The tighter labor market in Quebec could explain this gap, but we cannot yet draw this conclusion, according to the economist.
The strength of the job market continues to amaze, but it will be difficult to maintain over the next few months, said Joëlle Noreau, economist at Desjardins.
Job creation will be slower over the next few months because the labor shortage is making recruitment particularly difficult.
Joëlle Noreau, economist at Desjardins
All labor market indicators have improved, says Statistics Canada in its February report.
Youth and female unemployment rates are falling, there are fewer long-term unemployed and the number of hours worked, which is a good indicator of the health of the labor market, is at an all-time high.
Statistics Canada also confirms that young people have left the accommodation and restaurant sector in droves. For the past two years, there have been 89,000 fewer young people working in this sector. During the same period, the professional services, health care and retail sectors hired more young people.
The shadow of war hangs
The good performance of the job market in February should confirm the Bank of Canada in its decision to raise interest rates. A second rate hike is scheduled for April 13 and will likely be followed by other increases in the spring and summer, believes Desjardins economist Benoit Durocher.
National Bank economists are beginning to worry about the repercussions that the war in Ukraine could have on the Canadian economy. “February’s employment report would only be good news for the national economic situation if the global economic outlook were not clouded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” write Matthieu Arseneau and Alexandra Ducharme in their analysis of the labor market. work.
Rising commodity prices will affect household purchasing power, they predict, but the savings accumulated during the pandemic could lessen the shock.
“Consumers have accumulated significant excess savings and a comfortably full labor market could mean consumption will be less affected than elsewhere,” they say.