-- The Toronto Stock Exchange is up 150 points at midday with most sectors higher.
The best performers are miners and utilities, both up 1.4%. Industrials and telecoms are down 0.5% and 0.8%, respectively.
Statistics Canada Friday reported employers added 14,000 jobs in March, n line with economists' expectations, leaving the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.7%. Average hourly wages rose 4.7% year-over-year, up from February's 3.9%.
Canada's labor market, as Royce Mendes, Head of Macro Strategy at Desjardins, said, showed "some signs of stabilization", however, there are buts about the data. Friday's Labour Force Survey (LFS) showed the Canadian economy added back 14,000 jobs in March, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 6.7%. But, Mendes noted, all of the new positions were part-time, with full-time jobs "stable" after a "devastating" decline of 108,000 in February. Mendes also noted while the year-over-year pace of average hourly earnings accelerated in March, the pickup was due to compositional effects as Statistics Canada said average hourly earnings rose just 3.6% when keeping the composition fixed, suggesting wages "aren't actually heating up."
The Desjardins tracking for Q1 gross domestic product remains around 1.5% to 2.0%, roughly in line with the Bank of Canada's January forecast. Overall, Mendes said, there's nothing in Friday's LFS to suggest that the economy is perking up. Despite upgrading its oil price forecasts, Desjardins continues to believe central bankers will remain on the sidelines for the remainder of this year, given persistent slack in the economy.