March 11, 2024

In some graphs:

While full time employment is slightly up, the actual employment rate is down and the unemployment rate continues to waffle in the up direction:

And, as we said on Friday, capacity utilization in manufacturing is down, so:

Business insolvency is also up.

It all tracks with an economy not doing super great for a variety of reasons, most of them caused by poor government policy around interest rates, immigration, lack of tax-funded supports, and procurement levels too low to drive investment.

Public sector employment is what is keeping things going right now, which is not a great thing given that most Canadian public sector employment is not in the productive sectors.

The right blames immigration. It isn't incorrect, but it isn't correct either. Immigration tied to poor economic performance is driving this. Poor economic performance because the government and capital are not at all investing in employment.