Finally some good news from Canada: a big gain of 34.5K jobs and a drop of the unemployment rate to 6.6%: both better than expected.
Not all the details are positive: full time jobs were actually lost: 1.8K of them. Part time jobs rose by 47.2K.
USD/CADÂ is not really feeling the full effect and actually rising: this is because the US reported an excellent NFP.
Canada was expected to enjoy a gain of 4.7K job gains in January. The country originally reported a drop of 4.3K jobs in December, but this underwent massive revisions that nearly tripled the figure. The unemployment rate was predicted to remain at 6.7%.
USD/CAD traded around 1.2440 towards the release. As in most releases, the US, Canada’s largest trade partner, publishes its own Non-Farm Payrolls report at exactly the same time.
During January, Canada announced a major revision in job figures for all of 2014: instead of gaining around 180K jobs, in figures announced during the year, the country gained only 121K jobs – about a third of job gains was erased in one revision.
The Bank of Canada cut the interest rate in a surprising decision, reacting mostly to the price of oil. This accelerated the loonie’s losses.
