For two months Canada’s most closely watched survey of the job market has reassuringly signalled that a rebound in manufacturing employment is under way.
Actual employer payrolls suggest that growth was an illusion.
In September, Canada’s manufacturing sector shed more than 9,500 jobs from the month before, the ninth straight monthly decline this year, according to Statistics Canada’s survey of employment, payrolls and hours, released Thursday.
It’s a stark contrast from the agency’s Labour Force Survey (LFS), which polls households about their employment status and is more current.
In October, employment in the manufacturing sector was up by 36,500 jobs from August, according to the LFS, and had largely rebounded from declines after U.S. President Donald Trump’s broad tariffs on Canada began in March.
Economists have regularly highlighted the growing disparity between the two surveys and what it says about the resilience of Canada’s economy to the trade war.
They’ve noted the LFS survey has not yet fully accounted for the slowdown in Canada’s population growth, which paints an excessively rosy jobs picture.
Looking at the household survey alone, “you could be forgiven for thinking that the local economy is in the midst of a surprising boom,” wrote David Rosenberg, president of Rosenberg Research & Associates, in a note to clients.
Yet the payroll survey showed overall employment tanked by 58,000 in September, he added, with the number of jobs contracting in 80 per cent of all industries that month.
Decoder is a weekly feature that unpacks an important economic chart.
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