Canada ADDS 75,000 Jobs as Trump's America SHEDS 23,000 — On the Same Day

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: of expectations. Take a look at this. Analysts expected a net gain of 83,000 jobs. What did we get? The data shows we lost 23,000. The government also revised down the last two months of job gains, by the way, by the way, by 103,000 jobs. The president, though, was right [00:00:17] Speaker 2: now, two economies are moving in opposite directions. Canada just added 75,000 jobs. The United States lost 23,000. Trump says his economy deserves an A plus, but his own numbers and his own economists tell a very different story. Here is the one number the White House hopes you never hear. Which country would you rather be working in right now? Tell us below. No spin. Just the numbers both governments actually published. And Statistics Canada has [00:00:43] Speaker 3: released its latest job data, and the numbers for July far exceed economists' expectations. 75,000 jobs were added last month, a big jump from just over 18,000 added in June. Many of those job gains were in wholesale and retail sectors. All of this meant the unemployment rate saw a slight drop to 6.4%. For more on what all of this means for Canadians, we are joined by Jim Stanford. He's an economist and director at the Centre for Future Work. Nice to have you here, Jim. [00:01:13] Speaker 4: Thank you, Leanne. [00:01:14] Speaker 3: All right, Jim. So we heard the job data. What do you make of it? What stood out to you, [00:01:17] Speaker 4: first of all? Well, it's a big number. It's a great positive number. And it's three months in a row, actually, that Canada has created significant numbers of new jobs. So first of all, it confirms that we are not in a recession. The economy is growing. And it also, I think, positions us quite well versus the United States. [00:01:33] Speaker 2: 75,000 jobs, five times what economists predicted, the lowest unemployment in two years. And this is the third month in a row Canada has grown. Now compare that to what happened south of the border the same day. [00:01:45] Speaker 1: Just this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out its jobs report for the month of July, which fell well short of expectations. Take a look at this. Analysts expected a net gain of 83,000 jobs. What did we get? The data shows we lost 23,000. The government also revised down the last two months of job gains, by the way, by the way, by 103,000 jobs. The president, though, is still selling an A-plus. That's a quote, economy, but voters aren't buying it. Let's bring in Henrietta Treas, [00:02:16] Speaker 2: co-founder of... Minus 23,000. Economists had expected a gain of 83,000. And it gets worse. Trump's own labor department quietly revised the last two months down by another 103,000 jobs. So why is the White House still calling this an A-plus? [00:02:31] Speaker 5: ...on the issue. We're doing an unbelievable job. Costs are coming way down. I inherited, you know, they talk about costs. I inherited very, very high costs, and they're all coming down now. The food, the groceries, it's all coming down. We've done a great job. You know, I think we should be given an A-plus on the economy, but I think that's coming. [00:02:53] Speaker 6: Americans, however, largely disagree. More than two-thirds give the economy a poor rating, and they give the president low marks for his handling of issues surrounding the economy. The president has also struggled to convince America... First of all, it sounds like the labor force [00:03:09] Speaker 7: participation rate is awfully close to the humidity rate on the White House lawn. I don't know that those two numbers appear together. Astute observation. The reason they like the unemployment rate this morning is because it ticked down a tenth. If payroll jobs had been strong, they would have said they liked that. So that's all just spin. One of you made, I think it was Joe a second ago, said something to the effect that the unemployment rate ticked down for the wrong reasons. And that's correct, and it's important. The unemployment rate can go down for two reasons. One, people looking for jobs leave unemployment, they get a job. Two, they give up. And that shows up as the labor force contracting. That's what happened in July. We saw a lower labor [00:03:54] Speaker 2: force, and we also saw lower employment, not just in the pay... Listen that again. That is not a Canadian pundit. That is a former White House chief economist. He says the unemployment rate only fell because Americans gave up looking for work. Participation just hit its lowest level in over five years. [00:04:10] Speaker 8: Drop on the AI front. The jobs that were lost were disproportionately in a white collar space, financial services, payroll services, things that can be easily automated and you can be replaced effectively by a computer. That's what we saw in this payroll report. And the combination of that plus inflation, whether it's from tariffs or the Iran war, those are all compounding. And it's just a slew [00:04:34] Speaker 7: of bad news for the US. We've been a sequence lately. So we've seen quite weak numbers on the household survey. And you know, that's obviously a sign of increased slack. That said, 4.1 is still pretty low unemployment. So no reason to panic, but certainly a soft report. And to be fair, Canada's economy is not [00:04:55] Speaker 2: perfect either. Wage growth slowed. Economists say the labor market is, in their words, not yet strong. Housing and groceries still hurt on both sides of the border. But here is the difference that matters. [00:05:06] Speaker 4: And on the wage front as well, we've seen decent wage growth in Canada, still a little bit faster than inflation. This is another positive sign. So the increased purchasing power that workers have in is reinforcing that economic growth because consumer spending is stronger as a result. [00:05:22] Speaker 3: So we know we added more jobs mostly in wholesale and the retail sectors. And for, you know, years, the last two years, we've been talking about how summer jobs have been so difficult to find for young people specifically. What do you make of the numbers today that we're seeing, you know, unemployment kind [00:05:36] Speaker 4: of drop for young people? Yeah, young people are kind of the canary in the coal mine when the labor market is in trouble. They're the last hired and the first fired. And we've seen a couple of wicked summers for students who are looking for work. The unemployment rate was very high. This year is much better. So the youth unemployment rate is about 12 and a half percent. So let us put the two side by [00:05:56] Speaker 2: side. Canada up 75,000 jobs, unemployment at a two year low, three months of growth. The United States down 23,000, 103,000 more quietly erased wages at a five year low. One country is building. The other is being told to clap for an A-plus. Trump can call it whatever he wants. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics is his. The revisions are his. And the economist calling it spin used to work in his own White House. Canada is not winning by accident. It is winning because for now, it is still adding jobs while its neighbor is losing them. Which side of that number would you rather be on? Tell me below.