Pop quiz: What’s better than 200? Answer: 42,000. That’s the difference between the number of jobs Statistics Canada said last week that the Canadian economy added in July and the revised number they released today.

Last week, Statistics Canada released a dismal labour report that even Workopolis – who are normally optimistic about the slowly improving job market – had to call ‘worrisome.’

However, early this week Stats Can pulled that report down off their website and announced that an error had been made, and that they would be rereleasing the report this morning.

    From Statistics Canada’s media release: “During the system change that was implemented with the July release, one program was not updated. This was a human error that resulted in the incorrect processing of some data for July 2014 only. Certain respondents that should have been classified as employed were counted as not in the labour force resulting in an overestimation of job losses in full-time employment.”

So their number for part-time jobs created remains the same, 60,000. However they only saw losses of 18,000 full-time positions, not the nearly 60,000 they reported last week.

For a net gain of 42,000 jobs, not jut 200. Still largely in part-time work. The national unemployment rate remains at 7.0%.

Ontario was the biggest winner in July, seeing an increase of 40,000 jobs, largely in part-time work, but with some gains in full-time as well.

Youth participation is up slightly, while unemployment for younger workers is down to its lowest mark in over a year to 13.1%. This seems like a relatively good news story for people aged from 15-24 who have been amongst the hardest hit by job shortages.

Employment changes by sector

Employment gains were seen in both the public and private sectors, with private sector employment up by over 30,000 jobs in July.

The Construction and Healthcare sectors saw the biggest losses last month (down 39,000 and 26,000 jobs, respectively). Education was up 46,000 jobs, with Manufacturing, Trade (Retail and Wholesale), Information, Culture and Recreation, as well as Hospitality also showing strong gains.

Job opportunities posted online

These sectors also correspond with some of the greatest increases Workopolis has been seeing in job openings being posted online over the past months, and also largely represent industries likely to use part-time workers as well as full-time staff.

Workopolis continues to see increases in online job postings up significantly year-over-year – and these are up across all sectors and regions. Job postings are up for all fields an average of 21% over this time last year. However, amongst the sectors seeing the greatest gains are hospitality (+22%) and retail (+24%).

While online job posting were up nationally year-over-year, they decreased in July by 6 per cent from June. This slight drop in job postings month-over-month is seasonal as hiring generally slows down in the middle of summer only to ramp up again towards the fall.

Month-over-month online job postings were down by 6% in the West, and down in Ontario (8%) and Quebec (5%) and were flat in the Atlantic Provinces.



Online job postings are up across sectors over 20% year-over-year, and the while there is some noise lately in the key economic indicators we watch closely, most signs continue towards positive growth.

So, Workopolis is forecasting slow but steady increases in employment for August and the next few months.

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Peter Harris
– Peter Harris on Twitter

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