Canadian and U.S. markets finished the week in solidly positive territory as investors took stock of the latest jobs reports in both countries.
Statistics Canada said Friday that there has been virtually no employment growth since January as it reported the jobless rate rose a tenth of a percentage point to seven per cent in May. The agency said that’s the highest unemployment rate since 2016 outside the pandemic years.
Meanwhile, U.S. data showed employers south of the border slowed their hiring last month, but still added a solid 139,000 jobs despite the uncertainty from U.S. President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs.
“The sky’s not falling in Canada, but it certainly sort of points to maybe a softer labour market,” said Theresa Shutt, chief investment officer at Harbourfront Wealth Management.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 86.84 points at 26,429.13.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 443.13 points at 42,762.87. The S&P 500 index was up 61.06 points at 6,000.36, while the Nasdaq composite was up 231.50 points at 19,529.95.
“We’ve seen a pretty decent bounce from the April lows,” Shutt said. “I think probably there were a lot of buying opportunities … Most of us have regained any of the losses that we experienced.”
While markets are on more steady footing than they were a month or so ago, there is still a lot of uncertainty clouding the outlook, especially around bilateral China-U. S. trade negotiations, Shutt said.
She added the focus for investors is beginning to shift from the daily storm of White House tariff headlines and more toward what the economic data has to say about the tariffs’ impact.
“Businesses and companies have certainly now built certain assumptions into their outlooks and their forecasts, and that will impact employment going forward and hiring and business investment,” Shutt said.
Shutt’s firm is largely focused on investing in private markets, which she said provides a degree of shelter from the daily stock market swings, and that it’s benefited from being diversified geographically.
Being biased toward one sector over another hasn’t been a good strategy to navigate the trade drama, Shutt added.
“It’s not like you’re going to see these interesting market dislocations that are going to have winners and losers,” she said.
“Ultimately, there’s only losers when tariffs are implemented — it’s just the extent of how these tariffs will impact future earnings and growth.”
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.05 cents US compared with 73.21 cents US on Thursday.
The July crude contract was up US$1.21 to $64.58 a barrel and the July natural gas contract was up 10 cents US at US$3.78 per mmBTU.
The August gold contract was down US$28.50 at US$3,346.60 an ounce and the July copper contract was down nine cents US at US$4.85 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2025.
Companies in this story: (TSX: GSPTSE, TSX: CADUSD)
