Employment picture worsens - Canada

part-time jobs in July, Statistics Canada reported Friday, pushing the nation's unemployment rate up to 7.8 per cent.

Most analysts expected to see marginal job growth, with the consensus figure coming in around the 5,000 mark. The jobless rate was seen holding at 7.7 per cent. In Friday's report all of the job losses were in part-time positions.

The jobs numbers are key because it is the last reading of the nation's labour force before the Bank of Canada next decides on its key interest rate on Sept. 3.

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I was there last weekend and saw a lot of parttime job signs, mainly at stores though.

Expect them to drop as Winter approaches. With the summer were having i'm surprised anyone is hiring in the services sector.

Yes, SARS had an impact BUT, I question the scope of reports like this because:

1. There are a number of Canadian corporations that stand to profit directly from calling false recessions (because their stocks are considered "solid cornerstones" on the market and if they can make the market believe that there is a "recession", more people will buy their stocks). They are probably looking for Bank of Canada to drop interest rates because it wants to expand and would like to borrow at a lower cost because of the volume of money involved -- AND, it wants to take people out of the govt. bonds market and into its own stocks. These types of companies are sort of vultures -- they only make money off recessions. During booms, they're operating at break-even or reduced profits (and sometimes even losses at the height of a boom).

2. As noted in the report, all the losses were in part-time jobs. I haven't received the StatsCan report yet today but I'm willing to bet that most of these p/t job losses were in the tourism sector in Alberta and Ontario (which are big job markets). The fact that all of the increase in unemployment can be attributed to p/t jobs means that the actual salary loss in the economy is minimal, the impact on the quality of life is minimal (because very few households rely solely on one part time job as the only income in the household -- cost of living is too high).