The U.S. government shutdown continues to prevent the release of key economic data with the coming week’s U.S. September international trade and October jobs reports unlikely to be published on schedule.
The shutdown will also prevent the release of Canada’s international trade data for September since Statistics Canada confirmed that critical U.S. import data used to gauge Canadian exports has not been provided.
Still, Canada’s job market data next Friday is expected to show further evidence of stabilization in October. .. And the details of Tuesday’s federal budget will be watched closely for the extent to which wider deficit spending will add to economic growth tailwinds into next year.
We expect employment to show a 10,000 increase in October. Monthly employment changes are notoriously volatile. A 60,000 jump in employment in September followed 66,000 and 41,000 declines in August and July, respectively, and an 83,000 surge in June.
But with population (and available labour force) growth slowing, even modest growth in employment over time is enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising. We expect the unemployment rate to hold at 7.1% in October—up 0.5% from a year ago, but just 0.1 percentage points higher than May.
Canadian hiring demand stabilizing
Looking through monthly volatility, hiring demand has shown further signs of stabilizing. Job openings from indeed.com have been holding broadly steady, and layoffs have been limited. Most of the rise in the unemployment rate has come from longer job searches for new entrants. The youth unemployment rate is particularly elevated.
Heavily trade exposed industries like manufacturing and transportation services are expected to remain under pressure, but job growth in the rest of labour markets remains broadly positive.
Wage growth has mostly continued to show signs of slowing, and hours worked will be watched closely as an early indicator of Q4 growth momentum. August GDP declined unexpectedly, but an upward revision to July output and signs that the economy grew in September have left GDP tracking closely to our base case forecast of 0.5% growth.
