By Julie Gordon

OTTAWA, (Reuters) – Canada’s March unemployment rate was 5.3%, which is the lowest recorded level. This highlights tightening in the country’s labor markets, Statistics Canada data revealed on Friday. The economy added a net 72,500 job opportunities.

Although the analyst forecasts of an increase in job gains were slightly less than 80,000, they expected a rise in unemployment. From a gain of 3.3% in February, the average hourly wage for permanent workers rose by 3.7%.

We are not at full employment. “We’re witnessing the market heating up and that shows in the wage growth,” stated Jimmy Jean, chief economic economist at Desjardins Group.

Statscan reported that the rate of employment growth has remained higher than the population growth. Canada added 463,000 new jobs in September 2021 but only 236,000 people are working since then.

Partially offset by a decline in part time work, full-time job gains were dominated by those who worked full-time. Both the goods and services sectors saw employment rise, with construction and accommodation leading the charge.

Canada’s employment ratio, which accounts for both population growth as well as net job gains, reached its pre-pandemic peak in March.

Statscan reported that the US employment rate is still below the February 2020 level by 1.1 percentage points.

According to Economists, data showing jobs support continues to be supportive of the Bank of Canada increasing its policy rate by one-half point to 1% at next week’s meeting.

Andrew Grantham from CIBC Capital Markets, Senior Economist, stated, “Today’s statistics may not be as dramatic as the preceding month but they are solid enough to support callss for a fifty basis point increase.”

According to this week’s central bank survey, a record number of Canadian companies believe that labor shortages are affecting their ability to increase capacity in order to keep up with booming demand.

Canadian Dollar remained stable at 1.2588 USD to the greenback or 79.44 U.S. Cents after jobs data. It was almost unchanged during the day.