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OTTAWA — Canada added 58,000 jobs to its workforce in April, and reinforcing economists views the Bank of Canada will begin raising interest rates in the second half of the year, despite the recent turmoil in commodity markets.

The surge in employment brought the unemployment rate down 0.1 percentage point to 7.6%, Statistics Canada reported Friday.

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The lion’s share of the new jobs — 41,000 — were part-time, the agency said, though it noted that since April 2010, full-time employment has outpaced part-time, growing by 1.9% versus 0.8% for part-time.

“With April’s slight gain, full-time employment has returned to the level of October 2008 for the first time,” Statistics Canada said. “The total number of hours worked, however, remained 0.6% below its October 2008 level.”

The job numbers should “dampen some budding concerns that the North American economy was losing some serious steam,” wrote Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist for BMOCapital Markets, in a note.