Archive for the ‘economy’ Category

StatsCan just released their GDP review for May, and overall, Canada’s real gross domestic product increased by 0.1%. It had remained unchanged throughout the month of April.

The breakdown per industry in May is as follows:

• Manufacturing incrased by 0.1%
  • Manufacturers of non-durable goods increased by 0.8%
  • Manufacturers of durable goods decreased by 0.4%
• Forestry and logging increased by 7.7%
• Construction: decreased by 1.6%
  • Residential building construction decreased by 3.8%
  • Non-residential building rose 0.8%
  • Sales of existing homes decreased by 11.3%
• Service-producing industries: down by 0.1%
• Finance and Insurance increased by 0.5%
• Retail increased by 0.3%

Source.

Across Canada in the month of June, employment rose through 93,000 new jobs. (Full-time employment rose through 48,900 new jobs; part-time employment rose through 44,200 new jobs.) This resulted in a total decrease in unemployment by 0.2 per cent (bringing the unemployment rate throughout Canada to 7.9 per cent). This was nearly five times the jump that economists had predicted for the month, and is the lowest that the unemployment rate has been since January 2009.

This is how unemployment rates ended up looking from province to province:

• Alberta: 6.7 (rose 0.1 per cent)
• British Columbia: 7.8 (rose 0.3 per cent)
• Manitoba: 5.3 (dropped 0.4 per cent)
• New Brunswick: 9.3 (rose 0.5 per cent)
• Newfoundland: 14.7 (rose 0.9 per cent)
• Nova Scotia: 8.8 (rose 0.1 per cent)
• Ontario: 8.3 (dropped 0.6 per cent)
• Prince Edward Island: 12.3 (rose 1.6 per cent)
• Quebec: 7.8 (dropped 0.2 per cent)
• Saskatchewan: 5.5 (rose 0.5 per cent)

As you can see, most of the employment gains were in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba. Most of these new jobs were through retailers or wholesale companies.

Sources: Canada adds 93,000 jobs in June, Where the jobs are: Provincial job statistics for June

This past weekend, Toronto hosted one of the G20 summits that have been occurring twice a year since 2008. One of the hot topics on the agenda was economic recovery after our recent recession, and due to the European debt crisis that is currently underway.

While there was a divide among attendees about which was better – more stimulus spending to help the economy recover, or more conservative spending and balanced budgets – all countries involved in the G20 summit have agreed to reduce their deficit by half by 2013. By the year 2016, these countries are all hoping to have stabilized their debt loads.

So what does that mean for Canadian businesses?

While nothing official has been announced as to what Canada will be doing to reduce its deficit, Canada was agreeing with the European countries that what is required to reach the goal of cutting back stimulus spending, so we can speculate that stimulus spending will be reduced. And that could mean, unfortunately, that a lot of programs small businesses get assistance from would not be able to provide as much fiscal support as we have become used to.

Of course, we don’t know what will happen for certain yet. But we will definitely be keeping an eye on what is decided about Canadian stimulus spending, and will be keeping you up-to-date with any announcements that are made that could have an effect on the way you run your business.