Canadian Employment Preview: Five major banks expectations for September jobs report

Today, Canada releases its jobs report for September at 12:30 GMT, and similar to the US, it is set to report a slower pace of growth than the 245K reported last in August while the Unemployment Rate is set to fall below 10%. Most of the market specialists are expecting Net Change in Employment to post-reading in between +100K and +200K in August, while the consensus is +150K reading. 

See: USD/CAD sticks to two-week lows near 1.3180 ahead of Canadian jobs data

RBC

“We expect next week’s Canadian labour report to show a 200K increase in employment – the smallest gain in 5 months. Still, the increase will bring the cumulative job recovery to 2.1 M, or 70% of the 3 million jobs lost in March and April. The unemployment rate is expected to dial down to 9.4%, in part reflecting a sizeable number of unemployed students returning to school in September.”

NBF

“We are calling for a +100K print. Such gains would lead to a decrease in the unemployment rate from 10.2% to 9.9%, assuming the participation rate rose further to 64.7%. Looking further to October, we anticipate a significant slowdown in the pace of job creation in response to the reintroduction of social distancing measures by some provincial governments.”

TDS

“We look for the labour market recovery to slow with 150K jobs created in September, leaving UE to drift lower to 9.6%.” 

CIBC

“We’ll start to get a taste of a likely deceleration in the pace at which the economy is climbing back from its April depths. An employment gain of 120K wouldn’t be disappointing in any other context, but it is these days in that it will barely be enough to get the jobless rate below 10% to 9.9%, and we expect a further deceleration ahead as a second wave of coronavirus impacts some regions.” 

ING

“As the labour market recovery in Canada appears to have broadly followed the US pattern so far (and we see no reasons for this to have changed in September), we expect a less pronounced increase in hiring compared to August. We are expecting headline employment to rise by 175K in Canada, matching the July increase, and the unemployment rate to edge lower to 9.4%.”