Canada – The job market is experiencing more weakness than is implied by headline unemployment rate

A senior economist at the Toronto Dominion Bank has gone a step farther. Randall Bartlett has created an index that takes into account all of the unpublished or under-reported data that StatsCan, the Bank of Canada and the U.S. Federal Reserve collect to measure the health of the job market. He calls his yardstick the Canadian Labour Market Indicator.

It confirms what Canadians have been saying. “The Canadian labour market is currently experiencing more weakness than is implied by headline unemployment rate alone and has been for nearly two years. Contributing to this weakness are elevated levels of labour underutilization (job seekers who don’t fit StatsCan’s criteria), involuntary part-time employment and long-term term employment.

“Going forward we plan to continue publishing the TD labour market indicator as needed to provide additional context around our market analysis,” Bartlett says.

That is welcome news to the bank’s clients, the economic journalists who receive TD publications and those who visit the website of the bank’s economics department. But it is information all Canadians need.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Canada’s job market underperforming for years: Goar | Toronto Star.