Canadian Market

February 7, 2010

Economy by Allen Skyy

A new, “Capital Points” report by the Scotiabank group was just published. As usually it sums up the recent information about various sectors of Canadian economy and showing that in detail on interesting charts. But not only that, it also compares the present situation in Canada to the US and few other countries. So what is the current state and what are some of the expectations according to Scotiabank group? Read on.

Current situation (I have actually mentioned many of these facts in my articles already):

Housing
-unsold new single homes in Canada continue to decline and they are even at prerecession levels right now
-due to still very low interest rates the demand for houses keeps on growing
-there was improvement in residential building permits and housing starts in last couple of weeks
-residential permits increased by approximately 20 percent in last two months of 2009

Import/Export
-Asian import demand has significantly improved
-China is the leader among Asian states in import
-the share of Canadian exports to China is not really significant – according to China, imports from Canada increased by about 20 percent in December 2009

Employment
-43,000 jobs were created in our country in January
-since April 2009 until now, there were 109,000 job gains in our country
-138,000 jobs have been created during the last six months
-total hours worked went up in 2009, even though, in comparison with the US, the pace was quite slow
-average hourly wages increased by 1.8 percent from 2008 to 2009 and that is actually the slowest increase since June 2003

Expectations:
-noticeable gains in housing starts
-rise in new home prices
-improving job market
-improvement in housing construction
- moderate narrowing in the deficit on higher commodity prices
-estimated January housing starts at the level of about 184,000 – that means a 3.5% gain from December

As I said, my short articles have already mentioned quite a few of these facts – seeing them together with some new info is really nice, in my opinion at least. The expectations are thus the most interesting part, probably. Of course, this is just a short summary and for all the details about other countries and also charts, you should check out the original, 20 pages long report. 

You might also like

1. Canadian Housing in March
2. Canadian Housing This Year
3. Canadian Economy in 2010
4. Housing Market to Worsen
5. Housing Starts: 2009 and 2010

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