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“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a pair of North American employment figures that were as close to consensus as these two,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.

“In terms of the headline (numbers) absolutely no surprise what so ever,” he said. “From the very big picture, I think the modest job gain in Canada and the solid job gain in the U.S. pretty much capture what’s going on in the two economies.”

Still, most of the new positions created last month were part-time, at about the 24,000 level, with full-time positions edging down by 17,300 from the June, Statistics Canada said Friday.

At the same time, both private and public positions declined marginally and self-employment jumped by 40,500.

Economists had forecast overall growth of about 5,000 in July. By comparison, in overall employment in June declined by 6,400, with the addition of 64,800 full-time jobs being offset by a loss of 71,200 part-time positions.

“Despite a cooling in the economy during the first half of the year, the trend in the labour market isn’t yet pointing to Canada being in recession,” said Nick Exarhos, at CIBC World Markets.

The economy declined in first five months of this year. June’s gross domestic product could also be negative — meeting the broad criteria for a recession of two consecutive quarterly declines.