Rates are slightly lower in spite of generally positive news out of the US this morning. Yesterday’s ADP Private Employment Report blowout for December of 325,000 new private sector jobs was followed up with a +200,000 jobs print in the Nonfarm Payrolls report, well ahead of the 155,000 published consensus. Additionally, the Unemployment Rate fell from 8.7% to 8.5%. Why would rates fall on such good news? Perhaps the market was hoping for something better given yesterday’s ADP numbers. Whatever the case, the trend is that the US is printing better numbers than at any point during the ‘recovery’, although in absolute terms those numbers are not all that impressive.
In Canada, the Employment Report for December continued the recent trend of being somewhat underwhelming. Net change in employment of +17.5k fell short of expectations (+20k), although the headline number masks additional weakness, as full time employment fell 25.5k while part time employment rose +43k. This had the net effect of pushing our Unemployment Rate up from 7.4% to 7.5%.
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