What Canada’s top economists say about September’s jobs shock
Claire Fan, senior economist at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in Toronto, urged caution in reading too deeply into the headline. “The monthly employment counts are notoriously volatile, and there are reasons not to read too much into the softer reading too quickly,” she wrote.
Fan noted that 70% of September’s decline, or 48,000 positions, came from workers aged 15 to 24, a group that “typically sees seasonal headwinds around this time of year after the school year starts.”
The unemployment rate, she added, “remained 0.6 percentage points below a year ago.”
Looking ahead, Fan said she expects the labour market’s earlier gains to hold: “We expect progress made in Canada’s labour market earlier will be largely sustained, and the unemployment rate to broadly edge lower through the end of 2026.”
What the data means for the October 28 BoC decision
Andrew Hencic, director and senior economist at TD Economics in Toronto, was direct on the rate outlook. “The labour market has now taken a breather for two consecutive months,” he wrote. “The top line job losses are disappointing, but the focus should be on the unemployment rate. An uptick in September brings it back to where it was in June.”
