Did you hear we lost 39,000 full-time jobs in the month of February? It wasn’t part of the Stats Canada news release so unless you went looking deeper in the numbers you wouldn’t know this.
Now it is not unusual for media outlets to just go with the topline numbers and report something along the lines of 15,000 jobs were added but the truth is that is only because the addition of 54,700 part-time jobs off-set the loss of 39,300 full-time jobs.
I still can’t believe that Stats Canada didn’t put that in their news release and instead went directly to bragging about year-over-year job gains. Which were good, employment grew by 283,000 or 1.5% from February 2017 to February 2018, but losing 39,000 full-time jobs in a month should be noted.
Especially when 28,500 of those lost full-time jobs were in British Columbia alone.
The last time I took issue with the Stats Canada jobs report was last April when headlines screamed about Canada adding jobs of the 9th straight month but failed to mention in many stories the 88,000 full-time jobs that were lost that month.
In all my years covering Stats Canada I have found them to be scrupulously non-partisan. Let’s hope they remain that way and that this omission was not an attempt by them to downplay the bad news to make their current political masters look good.
The manipulation of statistics continue, which for anyone who has taken a stats course knows it’s relatively easy to do. I hope it was an oversight on Stats Canada’s behalf. I am so fearful of where our country is headed. I sincerely appreciate your truthful and unbiased reporting. Thank you.
Many of these jobs are being lost to minimum wage,.., and 12 to 15 hrs a week. This is “right to work”,.., with federal and provincial Lieberal collusion manipulating these outcomes.
I fear that there will likely be lasting negative effects for Canada with this current government. While the USA are gaining jobs and the economy seems to be re-energized via Trump’s policies, Trudeau looks like a school boy here. Massive amounts of investments are leaving or not occurring for Canada, countless federal deficits and new taxes (nat’l carbon tax, etc) will really leave our country in a stagnant position and I fear underemployment will be the new norm. Those part time jobs i.e. McJobs without benefits or medical coverage and other employer incentives such as days off paid that are replacing full time jobs is an indication of this.
At a time when the average Canadian is drowning in debt while using his house equity as an ATM machine and living paycheque to paycheque, our PM is focused on diversity and gender equality… What could go wrong?