By Gordon Isfeld
OTTAWA (MaceNews) – After two months of strong employment growth, job creation in Canada held steady overall during March and left the country’s jobless rate unchanged from the previous month.
The economy produced fewer jobs than anticipated in March, even as the unemployment rate remained at 5.8%, Statistics Canada reported Friday. First quarter payrolls rose 116,000 or 0.6%.
“The number of employees held steady in March, in both the public and private sectors,” the national data agency said. “Self-employment was also virtually unchanged.”
While more people found work in sectors such as finance, insurance and real estate, the number of workers eased back in health care, businesses overall as well as fewer jobs in accommodations and food services.
The Bank of Canada, in its most recent set of forecasts, had expected economic growth at 0.8% between January and March, slightly higher than estimates by many private-sector analysts for the first quarter of 2019.
Even so, Canada’s economic output has been much better than expected so far this year, with gross domestic product rising 0.3% in January – compared to previous private-sector forecasts of around 0.1% – and that had prompted many analysts to raise their first-quarter growth outlook to as much as 0.7%.
For all of 2019, economists are now penciling in gross domestic product of 1.5% – up from a previous growth estimate of 1.3%.
“While a moderate disappointment (Friday’s) soft jobs report must be put in the context of the powerful gains seen in the prior six months,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.
“And, just as no one was revising up their growth forecasts amid the jobs boom around the turn of the year – quite the contrary in fact – few will be trimming their growth forecasts as a result of one low-side jobs reading,” he said.
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This story was updated with additional material.