Most economists don’t give the Help-Wanted Index too much attention, but RBC Financial Group economists wonder whether the slide in the index reported today may be a bad omen for upcoming labour market report.

Statistics Canada announced today that the help-wanted index fell 2.1% in September. RBC notes that the weakness was broad-based with all provincial sub-indexes recording a drop.

However, RBC suggests that the index is losing its predictive power. “This indicator has been firing false signals all year with regards to labour market strength, rendering any message from it at this point nearly impossible to interpret. The Help-wanted Index is down from start-of-year levels, while the total number of jobs created so far this year stands at nearly 400,000. At some point in the future as job searches involve more and more new technologies, this labour market indicator will become nearly meaningless in its present form,” says RBC.

The big news on the labour market front comes next Friday with the release of September’s Labour Force Survey. RBC is looking for a gain of roughly 20,000 jobs, and a downtick in the unemployment rate to 7.4%. “Given the job gains seen earlier this year, the recent pick-up in core inflation and the lack of any excess capacity, the Bank of Canada would be expected to hike rates in this environment,” it says. “But, monetary policy issues are rarely this simple. Given the fits and starts pattern to the U.S. recovery, the high degree of geopolitical risks and depressed equity markets, we expect the Bank of Canada to remain on hold in October and resume hiking rates in December.”