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OTTAWA — Canada’s labour market is back to where it began a year ago, with nearly flat growth over the past 12 months.

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After huge swings, from gains to losses to more gains, employment dipped again last month — not by much, but enough to cause more head scratching by economists and policymakers.

Between February of this year and the same month in 2013, job growth amounted to a meagre 0.5%. Viewed a different way, when all the gains and losses are tallied, the economy added only 94,700 workers year-over-year.

With the economy expected to tread water for the rest of 2014 — at a pace slightly above last year’s 2% — employment growth will, likewise, continue to be weak.

The economy “is struggling now to create many new jobs,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.

The markets had expected Canada to add 15,000 positions in February. Instead, Statistics Canada on Friday reported a loss — to the tune of 7,000 positions, which the federal data agency equates as more or less unchanged, given its margin of error threshold of 28,900.