The Canadian economy churned out better-than-expected 51,100 new jobs in September, enough to lower the unemployment rate to 5.9%.

That’s the lowest jobless rate since November 1974, Statistics Canada said today.

Economists had been expecting the net addition of only 15,000 jobs and had looked for the jobless rate to stay at August’s 6%.

So far this year, the economy has created 283,000 new jobs — expanding at a faster rate than it did last year.

Full-time, public-sector jobs accounted for the bulk of the job growth last month, with strong gains seen in educational services and public administration. Retail trade, however, recorded a substantial loss in employment as younger workers headed back to school.

Manufacturing lost another 3,200 jobs, bringing losses in the sector to more than 71,000 in the past year as the high dollar makes it more difficult for exporters to do business.

Alberta continued to have the lowest jobless rate among the provinces, at 3.6%. But its booming neighbour, Saskatchewan, saw its jobless rate fall by more than a percentage point to 3.8%.

Ontario churned out 29,700 jobs last month — enough to lower the unemployment rate by 0.2 percentage points to 6.2%.


Today’s report also showed wage pressures were continuing to build. The average hourly wage was 4.2% higher than a year earlier, surging ahead of the 1.7% increase in the consumer price index.

“This is the largest estimated year-over-year increase in average hourly wages since the Labour Force Survey began collecting this information in 1997,” StatsCan said.