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January Brings Great Job Growth

As we mentioned in a couple of our blogs last week, confidence is steadily growing among business owners throughout Canada. The increasingly popular sentiment is that 2011 will make for a more-prosperous-than-usual type of year for entrepreneurs all over the country. The recession, it appears, is far behind us.

Late last week, QMI Agency’s Sharon Singleton reported that this bubbling optimism is showing signs of itself through the nation’s workforce growing larger. She wrote that the national economy had, in fact, created four times the number of jobs than what was expected for January.

This has pushed the employment rate back to “pre-recession levels”, says Singleton. According to Statistics Canada, 69,200 jobs positions were created last month. There was a fairly even split between full-time and part-time positions being offered. Meanwhile, economists had predicted growth of only 15,000 new jobs.

Synergy Merchant Services is quite proud to be among the many Canadian businesses that have added to its work staff since the beginning of the new year. Growing our family not only helps out the national economy, but naturally, it strengthens our ability to connect with business owners across Canada to spread the word about merchant cash advances.

And that cash hasn’t been worth more than it is now for quite some time. Singleton writes that the recent job growth as contributed to the spike in value of the Canadian dollar. The loonie, she says, has risen to a two and a half year high against the American greenback.

She also notes, however, that not all economists are optimistic about the nation’s economic future. Said HSBC economist Stewart Hall: “A change in employment trends in this decidedly positive direction while certainly welcome is far from proven at this stage.”

In a note, Hall mentioned that the economy only created an average of 8,000 jobs a month in the last six months of 2010. Nevertheless, 2011 has certainly started off with a bang. And, in fact, we have the “fairer sex” to thank for it!

Points out Singleton: “In January, the bulk of new positions went to women aged 25 and over, with 55,000 finding work, StatsCan said. Over the past 12 months it has been older women, over 55, who have seen the biggest gains in female employment.”

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