Statistics Canada has just announced that this nation lost 34,000 jobs in December 2008. The particular areas of decline were in full-time employment, according to nature of work, and in construction, according to industrial sector. Current construction job cuts are a housing story. Canada is continuing to do much better than the United States on the employment front and that helped over the critical holiday shopping season. However, more difficult times are coming and my working proposition is that Canada is about three quarters behind the U.S. with respect to the time lag and that our amplitude of decline will be about one-half.

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