September was a pretty good month for both Ontario and Canada for total jobs numbers. Canada was up 67,200 in September, while Ontario was up 22,000. Full-time jobs is another story. In Canada, full-time jobs were up on 23,000 while Ontario actually lost 5,200 full-time jobs.
Since the start of 2016, Ontario is up 27,200 total jobs, but the province has actually lost full-time 17,000 jobs year to date. That's despite a growth in the working age population of 113,400. So job growth versus population growth has been weak in Ontario in 2016, especially for full-time positions.
According to the Ontario Ministry of Finance quarterly accounts, for the first quarter of 2016, GDP growth was 3.0% annualized. I'm skeptical that the second and third quarters will be close to that considering the weak job growth year to date. Can Ontario have GDP growth with weak job numbers? Possibly, but that would imply decent productivity growth and given the lack of business equipment investment of late, that strikes me as unlikely. The second quarter GDP number should be interesting.
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