July's Poor Unemployment Numbers

Well, another whopper is in the books. Canada's economy continues to hold together like dinner in the dishwasher. The shocking number isn't 31,000 - the net number of jobs lost; the shocker 71,000, the number of full time jobs lost. As has often been the case the past several years, part-time work is replacing full time - a very bad trend, indeed. Was all this a surprise though?

The only part I can find surprising is that, after yet another record trade deficit, manufacturing hired more people than not. This is good news. Hopefully it keeps up.

The biggest sector to lose last month was "public employment." What ended last month? The Federal Census. This huge, nationwide effort was forever destined to disappear, so you'd think that fact would merit a mention in the papers.

The second non-surprise was the loss of 9,000 construction jobs. Given Canada's now ending housing bubble, this is not only unsurprising, but is a trend in itself. People looking for work in this field are going to be competing for less and less all over the country as we deal with the facts that the country is overbuilt, oversold, and grotesquely indebted.

Altogether, those two categories account for the majority of the job losses. It was horrible on paper, but not at all a surprise. Next month should yield more interesting numbers.