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Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said that unemployment needs to rise in order to slow down inflation, although elevated levels of job vacancies could soften the blow. In a speech in Toronto hosted by the Public Policy Forum, Mr. Macklem said that Canada’s labour market is overheating, with unemployment near a record low and businesses struggling to find workers. This is feeding through into inflation, as companies bid up wages to compete for employees. “We need to rebalance the labour market,” Mr. Macklem said. “This will be a difficult adjustment. We want to do this in the best way possible for Canadian workers and businesses.” Mr. Macklem’s comments come on the heels of a blowout jobs report last Friday. Employment jumped by 108,000 in October, recouping all of the jobs lost during the summer slowdown. Average hourly wages were up 5.6 per cent that month compared to the previous year, while the rate of unemployment remained steady at 5.2 per cent as work force participation ro...

Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said that unemployment needs to rise in order to slow down inflation, although elevated levels of job vacancies could soften the blow. In a speech in Toronto hosted by the Public policy forum, Mr. Macklem said that Canada’s labour market is overheating. This is feeding through into inflation, as companies bid up wages to compete for employees. “We need to rebalance the labour market,” Mr. Macklem said. “This will be a difficult adjustment. We want to do this in the best way possible for Canadian workers and businesses.” Mr. Macklem’s comments come on the heels of a blowout jobs report last Friday. Employment jumped by 108,000 in October, recouping all of the jobs lost during the summer slowdown. Average hourly wages were up 5.6 per cent that month compared to the previous year, while the rate of unemployment remained steady at 5.2 per cent as work force participation rose. The strength of the labour market is a challenge for the central bank. Mr. ...

Romaine lettuce in Simi Valley, Calif., in 2018. Wholesale produce distributors say demand is exceeding supply of iceberg and romaine lettuce. Mark J. Terrill/The Associated Press The cost of lettuce is spiking amid a shortage that’s leading some restaurants to temporarily stop offering leafy greens on their menus. Wholesale produce distributors say demand is exceeding supply of iceberg and romaine lettuce, and pricing pressures are expected to continue throughout the month. Restaurants Canada COO Kelly Higginson said a major lettuce-growing area in California was hit by some kind of virus, after a year that’s already been rife with difficulties thanks to heat and drought. “That particular area has had crops decimated. So there’s a massive shortage,” said Higginson. From fast-food joints to fine dining establishments, “everybody’s just pulling lettuce off the menu,” she said. That’s because not only is lettuce in short supply, but the available product has in some cases quadrupled in...

U.S. crude stocks fell by more than 5 million barrels in the most recent week, while fuel stocks rose as refiners boosted output to deal with high demand and low inventories. Crude inventories fell by 5.4 million barrels in the week ended Nov. 11 to 435.4 million barrels, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday, compared with expectations in a Reuters poll for a 440,000-barrel drop. “The drawdown in crude supplies is substantial. The crude supply is still very tight, heating oil supply is still below average,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. “My gut feeling is it’s a very supportive report, it shows supplies are very tight.” Refinery crude runs picked up in the most recent week, rising by 63,000 barrels per day to bring refinery utilization rates to 92.9 per cent of overall capacity, up 0.8 percentage points. Fuel stocks rose across the board, a salve for end-users worried about low inventories that have persisted for several mo...

European refiners have found themselves oversupplied with crude as an expected shortage owing to the looming EU ban on Russian oil has yet to materialize. The front-month Brent crude futures spread narrowed sharply this week, reflecting better supply in the physical oil market as fears over the EU embargo on Russian crude begin to subside. Premiums on prompt prices to future prices – known as a backwardated market structure – usually indicate supply tightness. Traders cited Europe’s ability to replace Russian oil with grades from the Middle East, the United States and Latin America while Asia is asking for less crude because of an economic slowdown and increased use of Russian barrels. Brent futures prices have also slumped by about 7 per cent this week, weakening for a second week in a row. “There’s too much oil around,” one European crude trader said. “(European] refiners seem to have overbought in November and December, probably because of fears around Urals,” he said, adding that...

A new report by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says government alone can’t solve the country’s housing challenges. The report by CMHC deputy chief economist Aled ab Iorwerth says the scale of the problem is so large that the private sector must be involved. The national housing agency says rent subsidies and more social housing are helpful, but more needs to be done. It says there must also be increased supply of housing aimed at the market. Home prices have eased this year as the real estate market has cooled, but they are coming off record levels earlier in the pandemic. The report says the imperative of increasing housing supply will be even greater as Canada seeks to attract more immigrants. https://www.tausiinsider.com/government-cant-solve-housing-issues-alone-private-sector-must-be-involved-cmhc-report-says/?feed_id=332358&_unique_id=645d53d77b13e

Cold weather could lead to power cuts in France on Monday as delays to the restart of nuclear power following repair work leave supply lagging demand, analysts said. Nuclear power supply had been expected to reach around 40 gigawatts (GW) this week, but operator EDF’s delay in restarting reactors meant it rose to only around 35 GW, leaving France more reliant on imports and gas-fired production. Refinitiv analyst Nathalie Gerl said the situation as a cold spell grips northwestern Europe this weekend and next week would be “much more critical” but for efforts to curb demand, especially by big industrial consumers. There was still a risk of a shortfall just on Monday, she said. “If we remain at 35 GW, next week Monday could become quite tight: we expect the demand at otherwise seasonally normal levels, but 35 GW of nuclear would be too low to meet a possible demand peak at 73 GW,” Gerl said. The current EDF schedule shows 3 GW of nuclear power returning to the grid next week, putting t...

If an employer is facing a “shortage” of workers, there is a simple solution: offer higher wages. Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail Don Wright is a fellow with the Public Policy Forum and a former deputy minister to the premier and head of the public service in British Columbia. He has held senior executive positions in business, government and academia. For almost 50 years Canada has done a thoroughly crappy job – to use the technical term in economics – of fostering a labour market that would provide for steady, year-over-year increases in real pay for working Canadians. I calculate that in 1976 it would have taken a worker earning the median employment income six years to save enough for a down payment on a typical single-family home. In 2020 it would have taken 17 years. If that worker lived in Greater Toronto or Vancouver, it would have taken 28 and 30 years, respectively. Given this history, one might think that governments would welcome the prospect of a change in labour market dyna...

The housing market slump deepened in November as sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed for the tenth consecutive month – the longest such stretch on records going back to 1999. Existing home sales fell 7.7 per cent last month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. That’s a slower sales pace than what economists had expected, according to FactSet. Sales plunged 35.4 per cent from November last year. Excluding the steep sales downturn that occurred in May 2020 at the start of the pandemic, sales are now at the slowest annual pace since November 2010, when the housing market was mired in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s. Still, home prices continued to rise last month, though at a far smaller rate than just a few months ago. The national median home sales price rose 3.5 per cent in November from a year earlier, to $370,700. Nearly a quarter of homes that sold last month fet...

Oil prices settled largely unchanged on Wednesday after government data showed a smaller-than-anticipated build in U.S. crude inventories, countering weak economic data from Tuesday. Brent crude futures settled at $86.12 a barrel, down a cent, while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled at $80.15 a barrel, up by 2 cents. The Brent benchmark had dropped 2.3% and WTI futures slipped 1.8% in Tuesday’s session after data showed U.S. business activity contracted in January for the seventh straight month, raising concerns about an economic slowdown. “End of the day here, the market is starting to get a little more anxious about the economy and things along those lines,” Mizuho analyst Robert Yawger said. “Main worry at this point is demand destruction due to an economic slowdown.” WTI prices briefly rose by over $1 per barrel on Wednesday after the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that U.S. crude inventories rose by 533,000 barrels in the last week to 448...