Canada published its employment figures one day earlier than expected. It certainly changed the recent luck. The northern country gained 82.3K jobs, far better than 11.3K that was expected.
The unemployment rate dropped from 7.4% to 7.2%, defying a predicted rise to 7.5% and rising to the highest since September.
Another good piece of news from the housing sector: building permits rose by 7.5%, around 3 times the early expectations for a rise of 2.6%.
In addition, this came on top of a small upwards revision from last month huge drop, making the actual figure even higher. Last month’s drop is now 11.4% instead of 12.3% originally reported. All these figures were published at 12:30 GMT.
The only small disappointment came from the highly regarded Ivey PMI: it slid from 66.5 to 63.5, lower than 65.2 that was expected. It’s important to note that a score above 50 means growth, and above 60 reflects strong growth.
USD/CAD already flirted with parity early in the day. The employment and housing figures sent is sharply lower, to just above 0.9910 before ticking higher to 0.9923 after the Ivey PMI release.
The pair is moving quite slowly in recent months. The news did send it below the 0.9944 line but not under the 0.99 line.
For more on the loonie, see the Canadian dollar forecast.
Tomorrow, the US will release its own jobs figures. Expectations remain firm.
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