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“Growth indicators for Canada have been decelerating, but you wouldn’t know it looking at the labour market, where employers are still beefing up their workforce,” Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said in a note to investors.

The country has now produced job gains for 11 consecutive months — the longest streak in more than a decade. While there is across-the-board strength, nowhere is it more evident than in the number of full-time jobs being created.

Growth may be cooling into the second half of the year, but no one told the labour market Nick Exarhos, CIBC Economics

The country added 88,700 full-time jobs in October, and 200,700 over the past two months. That’s the biggest two-month gain in records going back to 1976. Just under 400,000 jobs have been created over the past 12 months, also one of the biggest such gains on record.

The Canadian dollar advanced as much as 0.7 per cent to 78.64 US cents. A recent deterioration of the economic outlook has fuelled a 5 per cent drop in the Canadian dollar since early September.

The job gains — which were more than double what economists expected — also suggest the economy may be poised to end the year with a bang. That poses a dilemma for Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz, who has been touting signs of slack as one reason to remain cautious on raising interest rates.

Hours worked rose 2.7 per cent from a year earlier, the biggest gain since August 2011, while wages are now growing faster than the average since the recession. Employment for youth — an area that Poloz has given particular emphasis — increased by 17,500 with the participation rate for that group up by 1 percentage point to 63.7 per cent.