TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s unemployment in February was unchanged from the prior month and new job additions was only marginally up, data showed on Friday, showing early signs of an impact of uncertainty around U.S. tariffs on hiring decisions of companies.
The unemployment rate for February was at 6.6% and the economy added a net of 1,100 jobs, Statistics Canada said.
Market reaction: [CAD/]
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COMMENTARY
ANDREW KELVIN, HEAD OF CANADIAN AND GLOBAL RATES STRATEGY AT TD SECURITIES
“What makes it difficult to really interpret this data is.. the weather in February was rather poor. I’m more focused on the hours worked number, which suggests a degree of disruption due to weather.”
“I don’t think people in Canada were taking the tariff threat as seriously, really until later in January. February is the first month where we will be able to discern these impacts of uncertainty. And this is the first piece of sort of hard data we have for February, so it bears watching.”
“If we see this trend emerge over March and over April, I think we can start doing, maybe, a bit firmer conclusions.”
DOUG PORTER, CHIEF ECONOMIST, BMO CAPITAL MARKETS
“I think the market will largely look past this one for a couple reasons. First of all, of course, the big story now is the trade war. And as long as this report wasn’t a major outlier, it wasn’t going to have much effect. And I would not characterize this as a major outlier.”
“And the second is, the weather was pretty harsh in the middle of February, so we have to treat this one with a bit of caution in any event.”
“I guess a couple things that did stand out to me is there was a big drop in total hours worked in the month, especially in manufacturing construction. But that could be weather related.”
ANDREW GRANTHAM, SENIOR ECONOMIST, CIBC CAPITAL MARKETS
“Hiring stalled during February, in what could be the first sign that tariff uncertainty is impacting the Canadian economy.”
“Given the stall in hiring during February, and ongoing uncertainty regarding tariffs that is likely to have larger negative impacts ahead, we continue to expect a 25 bp (basis point) cut from the Bank of Canada next week.”
(Reporting by Fergal Smith and Nivedita Balu; Editing by Caroline Stauffer)
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