Juno News - August 11, 2026


Carney’s job boom？ The TRUTH behind the numbers


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20 minutes

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Transcript

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00:00:00.000 well Prime Minister Carney is trumpeting the latest Canadian employment numbers the economy
00:00:10.920 created 75,000 new jobs the gains were split between full and part-time employment but the
00:00:17.340 private sector added almost 58,000 positions while the government lost 27,000 jobs this post
00:00:25.920 on X by the Prime Minister, we're building our strength at home. Canada's unemployment rate
00:00:33.500 ticked down to 6.4 percent, a two-year low. The United States, meantime, lost 23,000 jobs. The
00:00:42.920 U.S. unemployment rate stands at 4.1 percent. Ontario created most of the new jobs. The Premier
00:00:50.780 of Ontario, Doug Ford, posted this on X. Our plan to protect Ontario is working. Amidst uncertainty,
00:00:58.140 Ontario led the country in job creation last month with 52,000 more jobs and 119,000 new jobs over
00:01:05.780 the last four months. The jobs created, however, were part-time in Ontario, which lost about 13,000
00:01:15.100 full-time positions. Quebec and B.C. created over 60,000 full-time jobs between those two provinces.
00:01:23.620 Our guest today is commentator Kirk Lubomoff, coming to us from Terrace, British Columbia.
00:01:29.400 Welcome. How you doing? Great, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about these job numbers.
00:01:35.680 Well, as many would expect, Prime Minister Carney trumpeting these numbers is positive,
00:01:41.960 And there are certain things to like about these numbers.
00:01:45.520 What did you think when you first saw them today?
00:01:48.740 Well, they're really strong numbers.
00:01:50.240 75,000 job growth is really, really strong.
00:01:53.620 And they were all in the private sector, which is a good thing.
00:01:56.360 The public sector shrunk by about 27,000 jobs.
00:02:01.360 So all in all, between the self-employment and private sector jobs, they're really good
00:02:06.620 and looks like moving on to the right direction.
00:02:09.000 It was interesting when you see the split between full-time and part-time jobs.
00:02:14.440 I know you made a note of these because Premier Ford of Ontario came out and said,
00:02:20.620 look at us, we're leading the nation in job creation.
00:02:24.440 But then when you parse the numbers a little closely, you see that, in fact, Ontario lost
00:02:30.560 something like 13,200 full-time jobs and the rest were all part-time.
00:02:35.640 What do you think that says about the economy?
00:02:37.300 well let's remember that the ontario economy is also one of our largest and has essentially over
00:02:45.060 10 million people in it so when a quarter of canada or closer to a third of canada which
00:02:51.220 should be more realistic about the true population numbers is gaining barely well can't even gain
00:02:57.540 full-time jobs it's uh it's a really big problem and they are leading like if you look at the year
00:03:03.220 of a year numbers they do they do gain about a hundred thousand full-time jobs but it's still
00:03:09.580 over 12 months for your economy that size to barely grow um full-time jobs especially when
00:03:16.540 you look at how much dollars they get from the government from taxes and all those sources it's
00:03:22.840 uh it becomes really alarming because when you look at the per per job per full-time job cost
00:03:29.140 growth. It's absolutely insane. And of course, when you compare that to the jobs that were lost
00:03:36.460 south of the border, the Americans actually lost 23,000 jobs. And one of the narratives that
00:03:43.500 Prime Minister Carney has been working with and pushing, thanks to his media, is that Canada is
00:03:49.560 growing faster. Our job creation has been, I think he said, four times faster than that of the United
00:03:55.040 states do you think that that lends credence to what he's been saying well it's an interesting
00:04:02.720 comparison because we kind of we we the way we account jobs uh is a little different so the
00:04:09.540 data is a little different but the difference is also to us's massive capex investment
00:04:15.960 in it over 600 billion dollars right just to just the top uh five tech companies are investing over
00:04:22.320 800 billion dollars in the next couple years so the the drive uh over there has been uh based on
00:04:29.840 high productivity they do have really low unemployment in general they pretty much have
00:04:35.120 full employment as it is and uh yeah the economy is not as strong as it should be
00:04:42.640 but in general their manufacturing is is really starting to turn around so when you look at the
00:04:48.160 um when you look at some of their if you if for example if you take away airplane orders from the
00:04:54.180 u.s manufacturing growth everything is growing double digits so we have they have really really
00:04:59.960 strong aspects that's really brewing underneath in the economy on the fundamental side and the
00:05:06.000 u.s jobs is also it's what most people don't realize is that um into federal workplace uh
00:05:13.340 count into into us is one of the lowest has been in over 30 years so the trump administration has
00:05:20.200 really been shrinking the size of the bloat on the federal side in canada it's not exactly the
00:05:26.400 same that the federal public sector has been has been shrinking just a little bit but most of our
00:05:32.100 economic activity and most of our job growth comes from government spending so until we see that
00:05:38.400 materialize in the private sector with robust confidence we're just not going to have the same
00:05:43.340 fundamental and foundational growth because basically right now we're we're paying for
00:05:49.080 employment yeah exactly because a lot of the investment capital has has to come from government
00:05:55.600 these days even in the resource sector where you would think would be a magnet for private sector
00:06:01.520 investment in fact in canada it's not like that at all because of the regulatory burden
00:06:05.700 and the fact that companies have been burned investing in our pipeline infrastructure,
00:06:12.600 thinking that these projects are going to get the green light.
00:06:15.420 And then, as we've seen, they have not been able to get those projects going.
00:06:22.100 And so the other thing, I guess, when you look at just the unemployment rate in the United States,
00:06:27.520 it's 4%, 4.1%. In Canada, it's 6.4%.
00:06:32.680 and so i mean we are at four percent i mean that's pretty much full employment
00:06:36.600 because you know typically you know four percent of the population for one one reason or another
00:06:41.780 is not going to work um and so at this point because of the labor situation in the states
00:06:50.280 uh job creation is difficult i mean because the only job jobs you're going to have created
00:06:57.240 people leaving one job to go to another you know yeah and and you see that in the productivity
00:07:04.840 numbers as well uh the the difference as well in canada now again the numbers get calculated
00:07:12.280 a little different because we essentially use three different data points to kind of gauge our
00:07:17.880 employment numbers but the unemployment rate let's remember that it gets calculated based on
00:07:24.040 population and stats canada does not account for how many people leave canada so we all know that
00:07:33.560 the headline population has been declining in canada but those numbers are not exactly correct
00:07:41.480 because stats canada assumes that everyone who has expired visa student visa temporary foreign
00:07:47.960 workers etc will leave canada except of course they don't because some of them get permanent
00:07:53.480 residency some of the get visa extensions and etc and so when those numbers will be revised and i
00:08:01.560 predict around september or so we will see the true unemployment number the true population data
00:08:07.160 uh well not true but more accurate because again they don't have the full picture
00:08:11.480 but uh we will see some of those numbers revised upwards yeah and i think people are confused they
00:08:17.800 see these numbers and they think they're very positive but then you also hear that something
00:08:22.200 like 120 000 people left canada like and a lot of them are younger people you know you're talking
00:08:29.080 25 to 40 who for whatever reason have given up on the country and think there are more opportunities
00:08:35.560 south of the border they are leaving and then you know people here see these job numbers and think
00:08:41.880 wow we're uh you know creating all sorts of jobs but i i don't know sometimes i have to wonder
00:08:47.960 whether or not these statistics are all that accurate
00:08:51.720 portrayal of the state of our economy,
00:08:56.100 especially when you look at, you know,
00:08:58.380 the number of lost full-time jobs in Ontario.
00:09:02.000 And it's interesting, you're out in BC.
00:09:03.760 BC was one of the two provinces
00:09:05.180 that created a lot of full-time jobs.
00:09:08.560 Quebec, between Quebec and British Columbia,
00:09:12.120 60,000 new jobs were created, full-time jobs.
00:09:15.300 you know 60 000 full-time jobs were created compare that with what happened in ontario with
00:09:20.640 the loss of 13 200 i mean that's that's a startling economic number from what the way i i i see it
00:09:30.660 what do you think oh absolutely and i think uh which is what you um led with i think it's very
00:09:37.620 accurate because one of the issues is is that we're losing talented i've posted data on it
00:09:43.640 before we're losing talented highly educated people to the u.s where there is less friction
00:09:49.380 uh to start businesses more innovations more in more industries to actually be able to participate
00:09:56.580 in than what canada has and this is the biggest issue that's holding us back uh you know i i've
00:10:02.900 talked about this before but if you look at the if you look at the the value of the businesses
00:10:08.960 the Canadians have started into U.S., if you look at how many they employ, it's way more than
00:10:14.860 anything the government can do by spending us recklessly into debt. So the best thing the
00:10:20.200 government can do is just get out of the way, reduce the red tape, reduce all this protectionism
00:10:25.220 that we have in Canada for a whole bunch of monopolies, and let's get the private sector
00:10:29.440 robust, innovating, and growing. And this is the best way we can grow our economy. We just can't
00:10:34.720 keep borrowing money to spend in order to create jobs
00:10:38.680 or hopefully multiplies from the private sector
00:10:41.880 while we're still red-taping everything which drives our own costs up.
00:10:46.660 So until we solve that, we're not going to see true growth,
00:10:50.100 true organic growth in the economy, which is exactly what we need.
00:10:54.160 Yeah, I mean, the Prime Minister just announced
00:10:57.400 billions going into construction in Ontario, Toronto, for instance.
00:11:03.520 so they're talking about again uh public money going into construction in order to boost construction
00:11:10.320 uh in the province and i mean again it's it just seems like we're spending money
00:11:16.960 and hoping that that does it but ultimately we have to create an environment in canada where
00:11:22.400 the private sector you know starts to pony up and and we're not there yet are we i mean i
00:11:28.160 no and and i think this housing announcement is a perfect example it the federal government is
00:11:34.640 going to put in 2.7 billion dollars the the province is going to put in another 500 million
00:11:40.120 dollars or so as well and that's to build 5600 rental units it's not even for people to own
00:11:46.500 it's for developers to own to rent it to people so we essentially subsidizing costs and that
00:11:52.520 equals to over 480 000 per unit so it's and and this is the the crazy part about it is on toronto
00:12:02.680 has some of the highest development taxes in north america so we literally boring from one pocket to
00:12:09.960 pay to the other pocket and taxpayers are on the hook on it while developers will be laughing all
00:12:15.880 the way to the bank so it's a perfect example where ridiculous red tape and high costs high
00:12:23.000 taxes are costing taxpayers both ways one is from the government's costing to build under their own
00:12:30.040 regulations and two to actual overall cost of housing which is driven up by taxes so it just
00:12:36.120 makes absolutely no sense to do that and and why would you build in the most expensive place in
00:12:42.200 canada like if you try to increase if you think about if you try to increase housing that we don't
00:12:48.280 even try to increase home ownership anymore in canada which is highly unfortunate but if we're
00:12:52.600 trying to increase housing and economic activity they go together so you should probably build
00:12:58.200 more housing in places where they need more workers in probably rural areas and northwest
00:13:03.720 bc sure needs housing there's a lot of projects that's hoping to come down here
00:13:07.720 where it's also cheaper to build houses you can bring in talent and you and create home 0.84
00:13:14.760 affordability at the same time rather than shoving some uh what i call shit boxes in the middle of
00:13:20.300 toronto for developers to left there all the way to the banquet so it just makes no sense as a
00:13:26.560 policy in general and this is the problem when you get what appears to be good news is that the
00:13:33.200 government can then say there you go we're doing a great job you know we created jobs and that means
00:13:38.840 that our policies make sense and to all those critics out there you know Pierre Polyev obviously
00:13:46.540 this is an indication that you're barking up the wrong tree and that the government is doing the
00:13:51.120 right thing when an actual fact when you parse the numbers and you look at what's actually behind it
00:13:57.040 and then you look at the amount of debt that the country is taking on because there's going to be
00:14:03.000 a fiscal update in the fall and you know we are what 70 billion dollar deficit we're running
00:14:09.720 massive deficits still huge piling debt on top of debt and i'm wondering if that isn't a bubble
00:14:17.100 really that's got to burst one of these days you know you want to build your country based on
00:14:22.560 government spending you know at some point it's going to blow up in your face i mean one positive
00:14:29.100 is that we shed some government jobs.
00:14:32.240 That was the best thing about this report that I saw
00:14:35.340 was that 27,000 jobs were lost in the public sector.
00:14:39.760 Really glad about that.
00:14:41.280 We never saw that during the Trudeau time in office.
00:14:44.100 He just thought, what a great way to bolster my job numbers
00:14:47.340 just by hiring public sector people. 0.94
00:14:50.340 It's absolutely ridiculous.
00:14:52.280 I think that those are probably retirement type of situations, 0.67
00:14:56.800 jobs that weren't filled,
00:14:57.840 because i don't want to call a whole lot of talk about layoffs government layoffs i mean is that
00:15:04.080 what you think is going on here is just maybe jobs that are going unfilled yeah there's a couple
00:15:10.200 combinations here one uh you know mark carney did uh promise to cut some of the federal public
00:15:17.660 workers and and he did by some of it by early retirement uh offers which some a lot of people
00:15:26.420 have been taken and the actual public federal public sector has been shrinking a little bit
00:15:32.020 some of this number is as well as from census workers uh the provincial numbers are unfortunately
00:15:38.980 are not looking good in many places let's remember like especially look at eastern canada almost a
00:15:43.620 third of the employee population works for the government one way or another um but if you if
00:15:49.620 you're talking about dissecting the numbers one of the interesting thing is um in the growth of
00:15:55.540 the overall full-time jobs or jobs and it's particularly why i look at full-time jobs
00:16:01.140 is that it's really led by health care and social services and those are all taxpayer funded so when
00:16:09.380 you look at the the overall employment growth it looks good in numbers but we have a higher
00:16:16.500 obligation as taxpayers to satisfy those numbers out and we don't have the growth in the private
00:16:21.860 sectors to pay for those and this is where the bottom line comes down to uh you know the the
00:16:28.580 budget was rescued essentially by the war in iran until high oil prices uh the the first couple
00:16:34.820 months of the budget a year look it looked really good uh there was less debt in them still a
00:16:41.140 deficit but less just because of the high oil and mineral revenues and this is really the story of
00:16:49.380 canada is because we have a small smaller population in general we have such high productive
00:16:57.540 industries and essentially our resource industries oil oil gas minerals pay for everything else in
00:17:05.460 canada and and because it's also such productive industries and such rich industries and we take
00:17:12.580 that for granted and after 10 years of uh hindering its development we're now trying to take a corner
00:17:20.980 uh take a new turn and try to develop them but yeah we just need to completely unleash the
00:17:26.740 industry to be able to pay down this out of control debt because remember when when the
00:17:31.380 government borrows we also have interest cost obligations that cost obligation is going to cost
00:17:36.900 us more more than we collect in gst and if our biggest share population is going to start
00:17:42.580 declining in about five years rapidly we're leaving our next future generations with the
00:17:48.420 biggest debt load any generation has ever had in kansas history which is just not functional
00:17:56.420 the other thing i guess is we're now in the midst of a cheap canadian dollar situation which i guess
00:18:04.260 has helped paper over the cracks of our economy a little bit because foreigners are looking at
00:18:09.700 canada and thinking well normally i wouldn't want to invest you know in a new enterprise but why not 0.56
00:18:14.900 snap up some bargains in the way of companies that can be bought and i'm wondering if that isn't
00:18:20.020 behind some of these numbers we're seeing in terms of foreign investment private sector investment
00:18:24.740 in our economy is this really about the cheap dollar and foreigners looking at opportunities
00:18:31.140 here to to snap up some you know profitable companies in canada rather than coming in with
00:18:37.460 you know a lack of capex and starting from scratch and you know building infrastructure
00:18:42.580 and doing all the kinds of things that we want in our country yeah and this is a good point because
00:18:47.940 when you look at the foreign investment in canada it's really divided into um into mergers and
00:18:53.060 acquisitions which has been a number one so that skews the number to the upper to the upper bank
00:18:59.300 then we look at how many people bought into uh our equities uh which a lot of people did
00:19:05.460 right into oil stocks and and oil and bank stocks and then you look at the bonds offering by
00:19:12.260 provinces and uh and to enter federal government and that it's been basically at a record high
00:19:19.380 so a lot of the money is coming into financial instruments not exactly into building new things
00:19:27.060 and this is the problem uh we need companies to come in and make 10 20 30 year investment
00:19:34.740 into the country uh commitment and that just does not happen at any scale
00:19:41.300 kirk thank you so much for coming on the show how do people find you online
00:19:45.140 uh kirk libimov on x on facebook and my sap stack all right thank you so much for coming
00:19:50.900 on the show we appreciate it as always
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