Stephen Harper’s Conservatives head into the next Parliament basking in the glow of a strong mandate and a healthy economic and fiscal outlook. Indeed, Mr. Harper is doubtless the envy of many world leaders, given not only this outlook but also because of how well Canada rebounded from the recession, reclaiming ground lost to the slump in terms of output and employment.

But there’s still a blight, and Mr. Harper should make it his priority.

Statistics Canada will report on Friday that the country’s jobless rate, despite having regained the jobs killed in the downturn, remains high at about 7.6 per cent or 7.7 per cent. And only last night, Bank of Nova Scotia economists projected in a new outlook that unemployment will remain at about 7.5 per cent through next year.

Economists expect the Statistics Canada report to show job gains of between 15,000 and 25,000 for April, following an actual slight decline in March. While that would represent a new high for employment, we still shouldn’t tolerate such a high jobless rate, and that poses a challenge for the surging Conservatives.

“Looking through the monthly volatility, we expect that the three-month pace of job creation will decelerate sharply to 13,000 jobs, as the outsized 69,000 job explosion in January falls out of the calculation,” Toronto-Dominion Bank economists said in their projection for Friday’s report.

“This pace is broadly consistent with a labour market that has already recovered the jobs lost during the recession and is now facing the greater challenge of delivering the next wave of job growth set against a slower pace of economic growth.”

Consider, too, that among young people aged 15 to 24, unemployment is at an ugly 14.4 per cent, meaning many of Canada’s youth can’t take advantage of the economic rebound.

 Article provided via The Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/mr-harper-lets-focus-now-on-cutting-ugly-jobless-rate/article2009403/

" USD- ADP estimates U.S companies added 179,000 jobs in April  "..

" employment has begun to show signs of improvement " ...

Companies in the U.S. added workers in April, signaling the labor market is strengthening, data from a private report based on payrolls showed today.

Employment increased by 179,000 in April, according to figures from ADP Employer Services. The median estimate in the Bloomberg News survey called for a 198,000 advance this month.

As more Americans find employment, they may be better able to cope with gasoline at the highest price in almost three years. Businesses added 200,000 jobs in April and the jobless rate held 8.8 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show in two days.

“We still have a fairly decent pace of employment growth,” Millan Mulraine, senior U.S. strategist at TD Securities in New York, said before the report. More jobs “have provided a reasonable buffer for households, one of the reasons we haven’t seen consumer spending fall out of step despite the sharp spike in energy prices.”

Estimates for the ADP data ranged from increases of 164,000 to 240,000, according to the Bloomberg survey of 34 economists.

Over the previous six reports, ADP’s initial figure was closest to the Labor Department’s first estimate of private payrolls in February, when it understated the gain in jobs by 5,000. The estimate was least accurate in December, when it overestimated the increase in employment by 184,000.

Fewer Firings

Another report today showed U.S. employers announced fewer job cuts in April than the same month last year, a sign that the labor market is firming. Planned firings decreased 4.8 percent to 36,490 last month from April 2010, according to Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Government agencies accounted for the biggest cutbacks by industry.

Stock-index futures were little changed after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in June was at 1,352.2 at 8:25 a.m. in New York compared with 1,352.1 at yesterday’s close.

Today’s ADP report showed an increase of 41,000 workers in goods-producing industries, which includes manufacturers and construction companies. Employment at factories rose by 25,000.

Service providers added 138,000 workers, ADP said.

Companies employing more than 499 workers expanded their workforces by 11,000 jobs. Medium-sized businesses, with 50 to 499 employees, created 84,000 jobs and small companies also increased payrolls by 84,000, ADP said.

Economy Recovering

“Employment has begun to show signs of improvement,” Scott Davis, chief executive officer of United Parcel Service Inc, said during an April 26 call with analysts. “In the U.S., unemployment dipped below 9 percent for the first time in almost two years, further evidence that the recovery continues.”

While payrolls have grown each month since October, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben.S. Bernanke, said on April 27 that central bankers would like to see more strength in the U.S. labor market, noting that a recovery has been “quite slow.”

“The labor market is improving gradually,” Bernanke said to reporters during the first-ever press conference following a Federal Open Market Committee meeting. “We would like to make sure that that is sustainable. The longer it goes on, the more confident we are.”

Overall payrolls, which include government workers, probably rose by 185,000 in April, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed before the Labor Department’s May 6 report.

The ADP report is based on data from about 340,000 businesses employing more than 21 million workers.

Article provided by Bloomberg News

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-04/u-s-companies-added-179-000-jobs-in-april-fewer-than-estimated-adp-says.html

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