Hope For Canada’s Economy In 2016-2017

Hope For Canada’s Economy In 2016-2017

Week by week, Canadian business owners have had a tumultuous 2015. Between the federal election, oil price roller-coasters, and foreign economies impacting our own, Canada’s performance can seem to get lost in these ‘big picture’ narratives. Thankfully, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a report recently that breaks down such concerns. In truth, there is some not-so-good news for Canadians in the report but there are many reasons to accentuate the positive.

Global growth is strengthening

Overall, the OECD reports that “gradual strengthening of global growth in 2016 and 2017 to an annual 3.3% and 3.6% respectively” is good news. Especially in light of the economic wringer the world’s finances have gone through since 2008. In Canada (the red line in the ‘GDP growth’ chart below) our gross domestic product growth is expected to rise from 1.2% to 2.0% over the next year, with a further jump to 2.3% in 2017. This would see Canada on par with the OECD member state averages for GDP, and slightly behind the U.S.

Unemployment in Canada is expected to drop to 0.2% over the next two years, slightly less aggressively than in the U.S. (the green line in the above ‘Unemployment Rate’ chart) but close to OECD member state averages (the blue line). While these two year predictions suggest that Washington D.C. has come out of the economic crisis more aggressively than Ottawa, there is significant investment and export growth on the horizon for Canada.

Positives for Canada’s employers

There is a lot for Canadian employers to be happy about in this report, especially the suggestion that employment figures will rise steadily. We look forward to supporting our clients in recruiting those people over the next few years.