Although the Canadian economy is generating jobs at a very rapid pace, the quality of these jobs is on the decline, according to a report issued by senior economist, Benjamin Tal, of CIBC World Markets.

Of the 142,000 full-time positions created over the past year, more than 75% were below-average wage jobs.

“If you look at the first quarter of this year, we saw 170,000 full time and part time jobs created, but real labour income increased by only 1.9%,” said Tal. “Two years ago, an increase in job numbers of this scale would have hiked real labour income by 9%.”

CIBC World Markets has developed an Employment Quality Index that measures the overall quality of employment and assesses the real health of the labour market. The index shows that, in the past 12 months, job quality declined 2.8% and more than two-thirds of all full time jobs created in the past year had a below average probability of lasting for more than six months.

“Granted, a low-quality job can be better than no job, but new job creation numbers exaggerate the real health of the Canadian labour market,” said Tal.

The full report is available on www.cibcwm.com