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By Tyler Marr

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National job streak comes to an end, unemployment up regionally

Apr 5, 2019 | 1:50 PM

The six month run of growth in Canada’s labour market came to an end in March, but the nation’s unemployment rate held steady.

Employment fell by 7,200 last month, most of which was full-time work, according to Statistics Canada’s monthly labour force survey. The unemployment rate remained at 5.8 per cent as fewer people participated in the labour force.

The March loss comes on the back of a flurry of new jobs in January and February — 67,000 and 55,900 — the strongest two-month stretch of job creation since the spring of 2012. The six month run of jobs creation added nearly 300,000 jobs. With the pullback, employment is up 332,000, or 1.8 per cent, from a year ago.

“That still seems a little brisk given the pace of GDP growth seen during that same period, meaning further sluggish jobs figures could be on the horizon,” CIBC senior economist Andrew Grantham wrote in a note to clients Friday morning. “A modest pull-back in March is of little concern to us and won’t raise many eyebrows at the Bank of Canada either.”

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Grantham added there’s nothing in the numbers “to justify financial markets pricing in the probability of a rate cut by Poloz and company.”

In Saskatchewan, employment rose by 3,900 positions, slashing the unemployment rate nearly a full point from 5.8 to 4.9 per cent — the lowest since August 2015. The province added 3,900 jobs, shedding 100 part-time positions but adding 4,000 full. The labour force shrunk to 608,900 from 610,000.

For the region, which includes Prince Albert and Northern Saskatchewan, the unemployment rate in March was 7.1 per cent, up from 6.3 this time last year. Employment fell from 100,00 to just 96,100 year-over-year and the labour force contracted from 106,700 to 103,400.

StatsCan said the number of people unemployed last month in the region was 7,300, up from 6,300 in March 2018.

Experts had expected the job-creation surge at the start of the year to lose momentum. The average economist estimate had predicted a gain of 1,000 jobs, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters Eikon.

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tyler.marr@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JournoMarr