ECONOMY GETS A FULL-TIME JOBS BOOST.

Sluggish wage growth clouds positive picture

OTTAWA • The nation’s labour market stayed hot last month, pumping out another 19,400 net jobs — and the vast majority of the new work was full-time, Statistics Canada said Friday.

The March results fuelled an already upward trajectory in employment and provided another piece of evidence that the economy has been building momentum f or months.

However, while the report was largely welcomed by analysts as a positive signal, some of its finer details pointed to areas of softness.

The country’s unemployment rate crept up l ast month to 6.7 per cent from 6.6 per cent, primarily because more people were looking for work, the agency said.

The report also found that 95 per cent of the new positions — or 18,400 jobs — were created in the more precarious category of selfemployment, which can include people working for a family business without pay.

T he fresh dat a also showed a continued weakness in the key area of wage growth. On average, Canadian earners saw their pay increase 1.1 per cent over the last year, while consumer prices climbed by about two per cent.

The survey results arrived as Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz prepares to make an announcement next week on the trendsetting interest rate. Poloz is expected to keep the rate at 0.5 per cent on Wednesday.

BMO chief economist Doug Porter said while the new data is “generally positive,” he believes it contains enough weaker elements for Poloz to flag that enable him to show the country has yet to return to full health.

“There are definitely some quibbles about this report,” said Porter, who noted the sluggish wage growth.

“But I would say that the positives definitely outweigh the negatives — we’ve now had solid job gains in seven out of the last eight months.”

Economists had expected job gains of 5,000 last month and the unemployment rate to increase to 6.7 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters.

Last month’s overall employment increase, which included 18,400 full- time positions or 95 per cent of the new jobs, suggests the country’s upward trend continued for a fourth consecutive month. But the gains in February and March were low enough that the agency deems them statistically insignificant.

Compared with a year earlier, the categories of fulltime and part- time work have each increased 1.5 per cent.

The country lost 2,400 positions in the services sector last month, but added 21,800 factory jobs thanks to the biggest month-to-month surge in manufacturing work since 2002.

The manufacturing sector added 24,400 positions — mostly in Ontario and to a lesser degree in Alberta — to climb back up to the same level it was 12 months earlier.

Still, compared with its peak in the early 2000s, the manufacturing sector has about 630,000 fewer jobs, a drop of 27 per cent, Statistics Canada said.

Alberta saw the biggest overall j ob boost among provinces, adding 20,700 full-time jobs last month. At the other end of the spectrum, Quebec shed 17,800 full-time positions.

The number of privatesector jobs rose 13,700 between February and March, while public-sector positions dropped by 12,700.