The Job Indicators in Canada

Canada added 418,500 jobs in July from June for total employment of more than 17.8 million, according to seasonally adjusted numbers from Statistics Canada. Canada’s unemployment rate fell to 10.9% in July from 12.3% in June. Ontario added 150,700 jobs in July. Of those, 5,600 were full-time and 145,100 were part time.

Canada’s gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 38.7% in the second quarter, Statistics Canada reported. In comparison, US second-quarter GDP fell 31.7%, the agency said.

The Job Indicators in the US

Manufacturing business activity increased in July, reaching its highest level of expansion since March 2019, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s "Manufacturing Report on Business". The report’s PMI measure of overall manufacturing activity rose to a reading of 54.2% in July from 52.6% in June. The figure indicates expansion in the overall economy for the third month in a row after a contraction in April, which ended 131 consecutive months of growth.

The US added 167,000 private sector jobs in July compared to the previous month, but the growth was below the employment increases seen in May and June, according to the ADP National Employment Report.

The Conference Board reported its Employment Trends Index rose in July following larger increases in May and June, indicating slowing momentum in the labour market, likely due to the diminishing impact of the economy’s reopening. The index remains down by 53.8% from the same time a year ago.

The pandemic has taken a bite out of financial stability, according to a survey of 1,100 US-based people interested in flexible work. It found that 53% of people are currently earning half or less than their pre-pandemic income. It also found that 44% reported they are currently struggling financially, whereas only 24% were struggling prior to the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, 21% said they were financially secure before COVID-19, but only 10% say the same thing now.

IT employment in the US fell by 24,200 jobs, or 0.47%, in July compared to June, but the month-over-month declines are slowing, the TechServe Alliance reported. Year-over-year, the number of IT jobs remained down by 236,000 jobs, 4.41%, to a total of approximately 5.1 million.

The outlook for the US economy appears brighter now than three months ago, according to the "Third Quarter 2020 Survey of Professional Forecasters" report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Forecasters predict the US gross domestic product will expand at an annual rate of 19.1% in the third quarter — an increase from the forecast of 10.6% in the previous report.

The Job Indicators Outside North America

The EU 27 unemployment rate in June 2020 stood at 7.1%, up from 6.6% a year ago. At the same time, the euro area seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 7.8%, up from 7.5% last year. The data was published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

The number of job vacancies in the German labour market fell by 496,000 or 35.7%, year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020, reports Xinhua citing an analysis published by the German Institute for Employment Research, the research institute of Germany’s Federal Employment Agency. The decline in job vacancies was most severe in the manufacturing sector, where they dropped by 56% to 66,000 in Q2 of 2020.

Malaysia’s unemployment rate increased by 1.6% year-on-year to 4.9% in June 2020, according to labour market data from Statistics Malaysia. The 4.9% rate is a decrease from May’s record-high 5.3% unemployment rate. During the same period, the number of unemployed persons lessened by 52,800 to 773,200 thousand persons (May 2020: 826.1 thousand persons). Meanwhile, year-on-year, the number of unemployed persons rose by 251,800.

UK GDP is estimated to have fallen by a record 20.4% in the second Quarter (April to June) 2020, marking the second consecutive quarterly decline after it fell by 2.2% in the first quarter ended March 2020, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. The 20.4% decline is the largest quarterly contraction in the UK economy since ONS quarterly records began in 1955 and reflects the ongoing public health restrictions amid COVID-19. The data suggests the UK now has the worst recession out of any G7 country. The UK decline compares to GDP falls of 13.8% in France, 12.4% in Italy, 12.0% in Canada, 10.1% in Germany, 9.5% in the US and 7.6% in Japan.

Australia‘s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose by 2.2% to reach 7.5% in July 2020 when compared to the same period last year, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. At the same time the number of unemployed persons increased by 41.5% in July 2020 when compared to the same period last year. The number of employed persons fell by 3.2% during the same period to 12.46 million.

Tesco will create 16,000 new permanent jobs after the country’s lockdown led to "exceptional growth" in its online business, reports BBC News. Tesco said it expected many of the roles to go to staff who joined them on a temporary basis at the start of the pandemic. The new posts will include 10,000 staff to pick customer orders from shelves and 3,000 delivery drivers.

Real gross domestic product in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) area showed a fall of 10.9% in the second quarter of 2020 compared to Q2 2019, according to provisional estimates. When compared to the previous quarter GDP growth for the OECD area showed a fall of 9.8% in the second quarter of 2020. The 9.8% fall is the largest drop quarter-on-quarter fall ever recorded for the OECD area, significantly larger than the 2.3% quarterly drop recorded in the first quarter of 2009, at the height of the financial crisis.