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Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey, based on a poll of 56,000 households, estimates the economy created about 107,000 jobs in April, the largest one-month increase in comparable data that dates to 1976. The monthly reading is volatile, but StatCan is fairly confident that no fewer than 77,000 positions were created last month, according to the survey’s margin of error. Nearly three-quarters of the working age population has a job, the highest on record. The unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of the men and women in the work force who don’t have jobs, dropped to 5.7 per cent, a number that many economists associate with full employment. The jobless rate in Quebec plunged to 4.9 per cent, the lowest on record. Average hourly wages rose 2.5 per cent from April 2018, the third consecutive annual increase and the biggest since August.

Hiring data don’t get much better than this.

“Those waiting for a pull-back in labour-market momentum will have to wait another month,” said Brendon Bernard, a Toronto-based economist at Indeed, the job-search platform. “StatCan finds the job mark took another leap forward to start [the second quarter], continuing a trend of strong employment growth, defying other lukewarm data.”

It seems that we’re spending and spending and spending, but not necessarily having a very clear vision

The election campaign is setting up to be a strange one.

The Liberals and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appear ready to run on the economy, even though economic growth essentially stalled in the fourth quarter and the Bank of Canada reckons the first quarter was just as bad. Trudeau and other Liberals flooded social media on May 10 with boasts about how they had overseen the creation of “one. million. jobs.” The Toronto Stock Exchange is more than 10 per cent higher since the start of the year, and the new North American free-trade agreement is mostly sorted. Those are tailwinds that should help the Liberals come election time.