Canada – Most jobs created this year are full-time, well-paid

A new look at Canada’s labour market reveals the first six months of 2012 have seen a big improvement in the quality of jobs that have been created — a surprise that was welcomed Thursday even though the trend likely won’t last.

It is already known that Canada’s economy churned out 155,000 new jobs in the first half of this year, more than economists had expected, the CIBC says in its latest report on employment quality.

But the bigger surprise is most of those jobs have been of the full-time and high-paying variety.

That is a break from past CIBC reports on job quality, which have tended to show that a higher proportion of employment created since the 2008-09 recession has tended to be in the lower-paying services sector or has been part-time or self-employment.

The report cautions job quality is expected to fall back in the second half of this year, but for the moment, there is something to celebrate in an overall glum economic landscape, said Benjamin Tal, CIBC’s deputy chief economist.

“It was a pleasant surprise. We got 155,000 new jobs, but an even more pleasant surprise is the quality of employment, which we know has been trending downward,” said Tal, author of the paper.

Full-time employment rose by 1.1 per cent during the first half of the year, 10 times faster than part-time work…

via Most jobs created this year are full-time, well-paid: study – Winnipeg Free Press.