NYT coverage of Canada
It is not often that Canada makes the news in the US. Here’s the story from the New York Times summarizing the latest employment data, the economic update and the resulting political crisis. If we use the factor of ten rule of thumb, our drop of 70,600 jobs compares poorly to 533,000 lost in the US (although I do find it notable that the US unemployment rate is now higher than Canada’s, and the difference would be even greater if we did an apples-to-apples comparison). So, PM Harper, you caught a break for seven weeks, and the GG can go back to her taxpayer-financed European vacation. We better see something more impressive in the Jan 27 budget.
Decline of 70,600 Jobs in Canada
OTTAWA — Canada lost 70,600 jobs in November, about three times more than many economists had expected, Statistics Canada reported on Friday.
It was the biggest decline in 26 years. The government agency said that the vast majority of the lost jobs — 66,000 — came from Ontario, the country’s main industrial center.
Canadian manufacturers, particularly in the automotive sector, are generally dependent on export sales to the United States.
The slowdown in their chief market contributed to a net loss of 38,000 manufacturing jobs.
The job losses increased the national unemployment rate by 0.1 percentage point, to 6.3 percent.
The news came just over a week after Canada’s Conservative government introduced an economic plan that offered little stimulus but featured cutbacks in government spending.
That approach puzzled many economists and contributed to political turmoil that led the government to shut down Parliament on Thursday to prevent its defeat.
They make it sound as though there was some kind of conspiracy!
Travis, that is a truly hilarious observation.
But they got the sequence of events right, which could be misconstrued for a portrayal of cause-and-effect.
I can’t believe that after all the hot air that has been flying for the last week and a half, the NYT was able to summarize it in two sentences. “All the news that’s fit to print” and everything else is just posturing.