Doug Porter: BMO Nesbitt Burns

BMO Nesbitt Burns: They dont find it funny. Doug Porter , chief economist of BMO Nesbitt Burns, sounded quite defensive last Friday when the latest employment numbers came out. They showed a loss of 39,000 jobs in July not the modest gain he and his colleagues had predicted. Aside from providing great sport and serving as an embarrassment for forecasters, do the wild gyrations in monthly jobs actually mean anything for the economy? Not really, he insisted, according to The Star. Avery Shenfeld , chief economist for CIBC, at least managed some wit. We re starting to get a case of neck straining following the wildly bouncing ball of Canadian employment data and Economic forecasters have been wrong so consistently in projecting the gains and losses in the job market that it has almost become a comedy to see what rationalization they ll come up with next. Derek Burleton of TD likewise played down the unpredictability of the labour market. While more outsized gains and losses in the coming months would not be surprising in light of the recent gyrations, history suggests that these bouts of heightened volatility tend to be temporary, he said. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.