Horrible employment report

The unemployment rate jumped 0.5% to 7.7% in February. That was up from 6.2% just four months ago. The Canadian economy continues to lose jobs at an alarming rate (over 200K in 2 months), which is making my prediction of 50-100K per month look optimistic.

Hey, TD: How does this square with your prediction of 325K job losses for 2009? We’re more than 50% there in just 2 months! Amazing how these banks with their big budgets, big staffs and incredible access to real-time data can have their predictions blown away month after month by a part-time zero budget guy like yours truly!

Even worse, the headline number of 83K in job losses masked an even worse picture as the number of full-time job losses were 111K.

That is an economic earthquake that is send shockwaves into other parts of the economy. Housing and consumer spending are going to continue to get devastated by this news, and any fantasy about a strong fourth quarter (Hello Carney!) is now over.

Here goes our great central banker Carney recanting his delusional January forecast in the Star:

“When we laid out the projections in the update in January, we also laid out some upside and downside risks,” Carney said in an interview in Horsham, England, where he was attending a meeting of Group of 20 officials. “It’s safe to say the downside risks, particularly around the outturn in the global economy, have materialized.”

Talk about talking on of both sides of your mouth. The dude is changing his ridiculous story and making it seem as if he had identified this risk. His forecast of a hot economy for late 2009 and all of 2010 is now dead less than 2 months after he put it out. What a pathetic joke! This is worse than Cramer who at least sometimes admits he was wrong.

Harper seems to be the delusional one these days, according to the G&M:

Harper, in his address to a business crowd in Brampton, noted that "Canada was the last advanced country to fall into this recession. We will make sure its effects here
are the least severe, and we will come out of this faster than anyone and
stronger than ever." The crisis, ultimately, is an "opportunity to position
ourselves so that when the recovery comes, we're among the first to catch the
wave."

And just in case, it doesn’t work out according to plan, follow the script: Blame the Americans!

"We will not turn the corner on this global recession until the American
financial sector is fixed," he said.

Great to know that the 2 guys (PM and Carney) heading up Canada’s recovery efforts understand what is going on here!