Canada’s latest payroll data may be less encouraging than it sounds, confirming inflation stress. Statistics Canada’s (StatCan) Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH) shows jobs rose sharply in April—and revised March from a steep loss into a gain. BMO warns the details are less flattering—the gains appear driven by workers taking on extra jobs, not new workers entering employment.
The Headline Disconnect: A Tale of Two Surveys
Payroll employment climbed 22,000 jobs in April, following the 5,700 jobs added in March. The latter is the most surprising part, as the agency had originally reported a sharp loss of 31,800 jobs in March. Just a few strokes of the keyboard, and Canada’s payroll data went from a crisis to showing solid growth. The SEPH is still at odds with the more prominent Labour Force Survey (LFS), a.k.a. employment data.
“According to StatCan’s payrolls survey (SEPH), employment increased by 22k in April. The decent gain contrasts with the 18k decline in household-surveyed (LFS) employment in the same month,” explains Shelly Kaushik, senior economist at BMO.
Source: BMO Capital Markets; StatCan.
“… the difference was surprising given employment has tended to be weaker in the SEPH vs. the LFS in the post-pandemic period, although meaningful revisions in this report have narrowed the gap.”
Outperforming the LFS sounds like good news. The difference in methodology is why it isn’t.
Canada’s Economy Is So Good People Are Getting Two Jobs
Canadian employment: Workers with multiple jobs.
Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling.
Both SEPH and LFS measure employment, but the difference boils down to jobs vs people. Kaushik explains that the SEPH measures the number of jobs, while the LFS measures people. “So, someone with multiple jobs could show up once in the LFS and many times in the SEPH,” she explains.
Kaushik specifically flags multiple jobholding as a behaviour that accelerates during high inflation. That would make this trend less a sign of labour market strength and more a gauge of household financial pressures.
Multiple jobholder data confirms it. The unadjusted SEPH payroll count has climbed to 18.19 million in April, up 0.4% (+78.1k) from last year. At the same time, the number of multiple jobholders was 1.21 million, up 0.43% (+42.5k) over the same period. Most of the jobs gained in payrolls appear to have gone to employed workers picking up a second—or third—job.
Policymakers are likely to frame this as “the economy is so good, people have two jobs!” It isn’t. It’s a sign of financial pressure.
Canadians Getting Multiple Jobs May Confirm Inflation Stress
The picture has a few complicating factors. Gig workers are self-employed in the LFS, but lacking payroll means they don’t appear in the SEPH at all. Strikes and unpaid leave suppress payroll counts without affecting LFS employment figures. These gaps are structural, not errors.
“Recent trends toward gig work (which counts as self-employment), holding down multiple jobs (especially in periods of high inflation) and higher-than-normal labour stoppages (also a consequence of high inflation) can widen these differences,” explains Kaushik.
What’s harder to dismiss is the direction of the data. Payroll jobs are up. Multiple jobholders are rising at a similar rate. The behaviour driving both—taking on extra work during a high-inflation period—is exactly what economists flag as a stress signal, not strength. The job market may look fine in the headline numbers, but the details tell a different story: more workers are taking on more jobs just to keep up.
