Surprisingly strong employment gains in August are keeping the door open to an additional Bank of Canada rate hike this year, economists say.
Statistics Canada reported that nearly 40,000 new positions were created in the month, consisting of over 32,000 full-time and nearly 8,000 part-time jobs.
That kept the nation’s unemployment rate unchanged at 5.5%.
“The job market is keeping everyone guessing,” noted James Orlando of TD Economics. “While the positive job gain provided an offset to weakness in prior months, the population boom (+103k!) is causing labour force growth (+54k) to outpace hiring.”
The strongest job gains were seen in professional, scientific and technical services (+52k) and construction (+34k), while losses were reported in educational services (-44k).
Statistics Canada also reported that average hourly wages…
