{"id":428953,"date":"2026-03-26T20:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/03\/canadas-payroll-employment-bounces-back-in-january-but-the-details-are-mixed\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T20:00:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:00:26","slug":"canadas-payroll-employment-bounces-back-in-january-but-the-details-are-mixed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/canadas-payroll-employment-bounces-back-in-january-but-the-details-are-mixed-428953\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada&#8217;s payroll employment bounces back in January but the details are mixed"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">Canada added 45,600 payroll employees in January, a solid rebound after December&#8217;s 10,600 decline. It contrasts with the more-widely viewed LFS survey, which showed a 25K decline in January followed by an 84K decline in February. On a year-over-year basis, payroll employment was up by 33,500 (+0.2%) in January despite a decline in the population.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">This report show growth but also some weakness below the surface. Educational services drove the bulk of the gain at +20,000, which could be a seasonal distortion after a cumulative 23,400 decline from August to December. Strip that out and you&#8217;re looking at a much more modest increase. Construction continued its quiet run of strength with +8,100, extending a trend that&#8217;s added nearly 24,000 jobs since July. Finance and insurance chipped in +6,600 after back-to-back monthly losses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The soft spot remains retail trade, which shed 6,600 positions in January and is now down nearly 30,000 year-over-year. Clothing retailers, grocery stores, and department stores are all bleeding headcount, and there&#8217;s no sign of a turnaround. That&#8217;s a consumer-facing signal worth watching and this week, Canadian retailer Dollarama offered disappointing guidance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">On wages, average weekly earnings rose 2.02% year-over-year to $1,320 \u2014 essentially flat from December&#8217;s 1.94% pace. Nothing alarming for the Bank of Canada on either side of the mandate but with energy prices surging, there are problems to come and the market is pricing in a hike later this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The vacancy data tell a cautious story. There were 492,400 open positions in January, basically unchanged from December but down 6.7% from a year ago. The unemployment-to-vacancy ratio edged down to 3.0 from 3.1, which is technically an improvement, but it&#8217;s being driven more by falling unemployment than by hiring demand. Health care vacancies cratered 15.4% year-over-year, and accommodation and food services dropped 12.3%.<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada added 45,600 payroll employees in January, a solid rebound after December&#8217;s 10,600 decline. It contrasts with the more-widely viewed LFS survey, which showed a 25K decline in January followed by an&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}