Canada's unemployment rate fell to a six-year low of 6.8 per cent in the most recent StatsCan report, but if you're a regular observer of jobs data, you know better than to take that number at face value.

Policymakers are growing frustrated with the seeming unreliability of StatsCan’s monthly unemployment reports. Those wild month-to-month swings from job losses to job gains are making it hard for analysts to understand what’s going on, and matters are made worse when — like last summer — StatsCan has to withdraw its job numbers and issue a new set, due to an error.

Well TD Bank isn’t going to take it anymore. They’ve come up with their own measure of Canadian unemployment, dubbing it the TD Labour Market Indicator, or TD LMI — an acronym we’re sure the bank is hoping will become a monthly staple in business news pages.

So what does the inaugural edition of the TD LMI show? Nothing good.

“The Canadian labour market is currently experiencing more weakness than is implied by … the headline unemployment rate alone, and has been for nearly two years,” TD senior economist Randall Bartlett writes.