Canada's jobless rate fell to 6.4 percent last month, its lowest level in 31 years, lending fuel to Prime Minister Paul Martin's federal election campaign.
Sound economic management is a key platform issue for Martin, who was a longtime finance minister before becoming Liberal leader two years ago.
His minority government was toppled last week and he is gunning for votes in the Jan. 23 elections to elect a new House of Commons.
Not since December 1974 has the country's unemployment rate dropped as low as it reached last month, analysts said on Friday.
The addition of about 30,600 new full-time positions last month pushed the rate below October's 6.6 percent, which was also a record not seen in three decades, Statistics Canada reported.
"This was just a stunningly strong report," especially following 68,700 new jobs added in October, said Marc Levesque, chief Canadian strategist with TD Securities.
Christmas shoppers will likely be buoyed by the strong employment figures, which were spread fairly evenly across regions of the country and across most sectors.
It might also help allay concerns that consumers may have about the overall health of the country's job market after announcements this week of 1,800 job cuts at paper giant Domtar and about 900 layoffs at banking giant CIBC.
"We've had a drumbeat of layoff news in recent weeks and I think this kind of report is exceptionally encouraging for consumer confidence," said Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at brokerage BMO Nesbitt Burns.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day