BMO's Douglas Porter says the bottom line to be taken from Friday's Canadian employment data is that "for a refreshing change", results were "no big surprise" in March, and he adds the big picture take away is that job growth has been quite modest over the past year, but so, too, has been the growth in the available labour force, holding the unemployment rate steady.
Porter says the only really new news was that wages "seemingly popped", which the Bank of Canada will keep on eye on, particularly as it is already on high alert for signs of any spillover from higher energy prices to broader inflation.
Canadian employment, Porter notes, rose by a "moderate" 14,100 in March after a "tough start" to 2026. Given that employment had plunged by a combined 108,700 positions in the first two months of the year, no one is going to mistake this small back-up as a sign of strength, especially when full-time jobs actually nudged down a bit further last month, he says.
Still, Porter adds, even a small plus sign is a positive, as is the stable jobless rate, which held at 6.7% -- actually a tick lower than a year ago.
Porter notes the labor force also edged up 15,000 after two big declines as the participation rate steadied, but the number of people in the workforce has only risen 0.4% in the past year, just a tad below job growth.
Overall, Porter says, Friday's LFS was "bizarrely" close to consensus and gets a passing grade of 57.1 on BMO's scoring system. "That will barely move the needle for the Bank of Canada debate," he adds.
Porter notes one "wrinkle" was that average hourly wages popped, unexpectedly, to a 4.7% year-over-year pace, the fastest in more than a year and well up from 3.9% the prior month. "Wages can be a bouncy series, but that's a big bounce, and a move that bears watching."
Meantime, he also notes, total hours worked edged up 0.2% month over month after a 'deep dive' in February. That still left them down at a 0.4% annual rate for all of Q1. With a half-decent productivity gain in the quarter, that could still work with BMO's 1.5% estimate for Q1 gross domestic product growth, Porter says.