Paul Martin commentary
The topsy-turvey roller coaster known as the monthly jobs report maintained it record of big swings for the fourth consecutive month in April.
Friday’s StatsCan report says Saskatchewan lost 4,000 jobs last month. It was like clockwork. January was up 6,000, February was down a comparable amount and then March had a gain of 6,000. Now we have April with a reduction of 4,000 made up of 10,000 full-time positions lost with 6,000 new part-time slots.
It is hard to imagine any marketplace would generate such volatility so we should probably just ignore the monthly numbers and look at the trend or perhaps an average to see if we can have a more accurate reading on the relationship between employers and workers.
If you average them out, the numbers show Saskatchewan is adding a modest number of jobs. We’d be up about 2,000 for the year: probably a fairly accurate assessment.
This report also says that the working age population continues to expand but the number of people who are working or on hunt for a job last month was actually down.
