Canada created an unexpectedly high number of jobs for the fourth month in a row in December and analysts said on Friday this would make it harder for the Bank of Canada to cut interest rates later this month.
Statistics Canada said 53,100 jobs were created in December - far higher than the 20,000 increase expected by the markets - which reduced the unemployment rate to 7.4 percent from the 7.5 percent recorded in November.
"It's rather astounding, the fourth month in a row beating expectations by a huge margin. Canada's labour market is a bit like the energiser bunny, it just keeps on going and going," said Marc Levesque, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.