07:07 AM EST, 12/10/2024 (MT Newswires) -- The higher Canadian unemployment rate certainly doesn't reflect weaker government hiring -- in fact, it's just the

opposite, noted Bank of Montreal (BMO).

Canadian public administration jobs have been running at around 6% of total employment in recent months, or the highest non-pandemic reading since the mid-1990s -- when federal public spending was getting slashed, said the bank.

Between 1998 -- when the federal budget was finally

balanced -- and 2019, which was pre-pandemic, public administration employment averaged 5.0%. As a consequence, on a structural basis, there appears to have been a full percentage point leveling up of such jobs relative to the total workforce, stated BMO.

This doesn't just reflect weakness in the private sector, as job growth in that segment has been steady, pointed out the bank.

Meantime, United States public administration employment has also drifted higher but remains well below Canada at around 5%, added BMO.

This will almost always be the case in a steady state

-- since a larger US economy provides more economies of

scale for public administration jobs -- but the gap is notably wider than experienced over the past 20 years, according to the bank.