Canada’s economy is showing unexpected resiliency as the year ends with the strongest job market in a decade offsetting slumping exports, Bloomberg reported. A sharp rise in new positions cut the jobless rate to 5.9% in November, Statistics Canada said Friday, one of the lowest readings ever in the past four decades and the first time the rate has fallen below 6% since 2008. Employers added 79,500 workers during the month, bringing gains over the past 12 months to nearly 400,000. Increased employment, meanwhile, is helping to fuel household spending, a separate report showed, with consumption rising at the fastest pace since before the recession over the previous two quarters. That helped to temper a sharp drop in exports that slowed third quarter growth to an annualized 1.7%. The data indicates an expected slowdown for Canada’s economy in coming quarters may be less severe than anticipated and slack in the labor market is diminishing more rapidly, raising the prospect of faster interest rate increases by the Bank of Canada. The Canadian dollar jumped as much as 1.5% on the reports.
