Hudson's Bay will terminate more than 8,000 employees, close stores by Sunday
Allison Hurst reports from a Hudson's Bay distribution hub where employees are holding a rally on one of the final days of work to honour severance obligations.
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CTV News
30 minutes ago
- CTV News
Hiring in the U.S. slows, yet employers added a solid 139,000 jobs in May
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers slowed hiring last month, but still added a solid 139,000 jobs amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump's trade wars. Hiring fell from a revised 147,000 in April, the Department of Labor said Friday. The job gains last month were slightly higher than the 130,000 economists had forecast. But revisions shaved 95,000 jobs from March and April payrolls. The unemployment rate stayed at a low 4.2 per cent. Healthcare companies added jobs. But the federal government shed 22,000 jobs, the most since November 2020, as Trump's job cuts and hiring freeze had an impact. Average hourly wages rose 0.4 per cent from April and 3.9 per cent from a year earlier – a bit higher than forecast. Trump's aggressive and unpredictable policies – especially his sweeping taxes on imports – have muddied the outlook for the economy and the job market and raised fears that the American economy could be headed toward recession. But so far the damage hasn't shown up clearly in government economic data. Economists expect Trump's policies to take a toll on America's economy, the world's largest. His massive taxes on imports — tariffs — are expected to raise costs for U.S. companies that buy raw materials, equipment and components from overseas and force them to cut back hiring or even lay off workers. Billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has slashed federal workers and cancelled government contracts. Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration is expected to make it harder for businesses to find enough workers. For the most part, though, any damage has yet to show up in the government's economic data. The U.S. economy and job market have proven surprisingly resilient in recent years. When the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve raised their benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023, the higher borrowing costs were widely expected to tip the United States into a recession. Still, the job market has clearly decelerated. So far this year, American employers have added an average of less than 124,,000 jobs a month. That is down from 168,000 last year, 216,000 in 2023, 380,000 in 2022. And former Fed economist Claudia Sahm warns that the job market of 2025 isn't nearly as durable as the two or three years ago when immigrants were pouring into the U.S. job market and employers were posting record job openings. 'Any signs of weakness in the data this week would stoke fears of a recession again,' Sahm, now chief economist at New Century Advisors, wrote in a Substack post this week. 'It's too soon to see the full effects of tariffs, DOGE, or other policies on the labor market; softening now would suggest less resilience to those later effects, raising the odds of a recession.'' Recent economic reports have sent mixed signals. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly to 7.4 million in April — seemingly a good sign. But the same report showed that layoffs ticked up and the number of Americans quitting their jobs fell, a sign they were less confident they could find something better elsewhere. Surveys by the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, found that both American manufacturing and services businesses were contracting last month. And the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level in eight months. Jobless claims — a proxy for layoffs — still remain low by historical standards, suggesting that employers are reluctant to cut staff despite uncertainty over Trump's policies. They likely remember how hard it was to bring people back from the massive but short-lived layoffs of the 2020 COVID-19 recession as the U.S. economy bounced back with unexpected strength. Still, the job market has clearly decelerated. So far this year, American employers have added an average 144,000 jobs a month. That is down from 168,000 last year, 216,000 in 2023, 380,000 in 2022 and a record 603,000 in 2021 in the rebound from COVID-19 layoffs. Trump's tariffs — and the erratic way he rolls them out, suspends them and conjures up new ones — have already buffeted the economy. America's gross domestic product — the nation's output of goods and services — fell at a 0.2 per cent annual pace from January through March this year. A surge of imports shaved 5 percentage points off growth during the first quarter as companies rushed to bring in foreign products ahead of Trump's tariffs. Imports plunged by a record 16 per cent in April as Trump's levies took effect. The drop in foreign goods could mean fewer jobs at the warehouses that store them and the trucking companies that haul them around, wrote Michael Madowitz, an economist at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute. A resilient job market has been one of the linchpins that's propped up the U.S. economy, and the worry is that all the uncertainty created by Trump's on-and-off tariffs could push businesses to freeze their hiring. Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, Germany's DAX lost 0.2 per cent, while the CAC 40 in Paris slid 1.6 per cent. Britain's FTSE 100 was flat. In Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5 per cent to 37,741.61, while the Kospi in South Korea jumped 1.5 per cent to 2,812.05. Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.2 per cent to 23,859.52 and the Shanghai Composite index edged less than 0.1 per cent higher, to 3,385.36. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.3 per cent to 8,515.70. India's Sensex gained 0.8 per cent after the Reserve Bank cut its key interest rate by a half a percentage point to 5.50 per cent. The yield on the 10-year Treasury held steady at 4.39 per cent after dropping sharply on Wednesday as expectations built that the Federal Reserve will need to cut interest rates later this year to prop up an economy potentially weakened by tariffs. In energy trading early Friday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 7 cents to $63.30 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 3 cents to $65.31 per barrel. The U.S. dollar rose to 144.24 Japanese yen from 143.49 yen. The euro fell to $1.1414 from $1.1448. Paul Wiseman, The Associated Press
Globe and Mail
35 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
In a challenging market, a few brave developers push forward
The federal government last week made good on its promise to give first-time home buyers a break on the GST on new homes – a move the industry hopes is just one of many lifelines they'll be thrown. Across the country, thousands of completed homes are sitting unsold, and the industry is hoping the GST break will get sales moving. Rennie Marketing Systems has forecasted nearly 3,500 unsold units will sit on the Vancouver area market by year's end. In Toronto, the estimate is close to 24,000 unsold units, according to the research and consulting firm Urbanation. Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned on the promise to build over the next decade almost half a million homes per year. James Innis, president of Vancouver's Sutton Group Realty, said the Liberal government must know that if they're to achieve that goal they need to help clear out the thousands of existing unsold units, which he called 'a new phenomenon.' 'Is this policy partly there to say, 'Okay, we know that there are thousands of units available in Canada. Can we make them more accessible?'' Like others, he would like to see the GST policy expanded to all buyers, not just first-time buyers. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal said the GST break will help at the margins, but the industry needs to continue to build. And there aren't many developers building right now, except for those counting on a market upturn by the time they complete. 'We have a lot of inventories. But, you know, population growth is still rising. Investors will be back in the market, interest rates will be lower and lower, and those inventories will start going down and the demand will be there,' said Mr. Tal. 'And that's something that many of those pioneer developers, if you wish, are counting on. It's a risk. It's a gamble, because nobody can calculate exactly how long it will take to get rid of the inventories. But that's more or less the rationale there. 'So, we are seeing a situation in which some of the big [developers] are taking the risk and saying, 'You know what? The market will wake up two or three years from now.' And they are absolutely right.' Mr. Innis concurred, saying it is only the 'brave and the bold, and the well capitalized' that would attempt to push on with a major project in the current market. Critics say proposed GST rebate won't help most first-time homebuyers Developer Grosvenor, which has been active in the Vancouver market for 70 years, is one of the brave ones. The company announced this week that it will start construction on a 41-storey, 451-unit condo tower and two rental towers at the Brentwood Block in Burnaby, B.C. – one of the region's largest construction launches in recent years. It is the first phase of a larger master-planned community that, once complete, will deliver 1,730 units, more than half of them rental. Marc Josephson, Grosvenor's senior vice-president of development, said the company has the confidence to start construction because of a successful presale launch last fall, in which they sold more than 100 units in the first month. Consumer confidence may have since tanked, but Mr. Josephson said that in the long term, the region is still undersupplied. 'This is one of the first construction starts in the region and one of the largest,' he said. 'And one of the reasons is when we launched in the fall, we had success. 'Despite the well-documented conversation about slow sales in the first quarter of 2025 – and no doubt they were slow – things were picking up toward the end of last year, and we were an example of that. 'There are so many factors that determine when you move forward. If you are on a different time scale, and perhaps starting sales right now, that's a different story.' Meanwhile, Square Nine Developments is using marketing incentives to unload some sitting inventory. The company slashed prices on 77 units at its completed Belvedere project in Surrey City Centre last Saturday, reducing the price per square foot from $1,000 to $720. The result was a long lineup and the sale of 63 units, half of them to investors, according to Key Marketing, whose president Cam Good has been offering the occasional 'Condoday' flash sale discounts as one-off events since the 2008 market downturn, for projects in serious need of a boost. He also recently promoted another Surrey project, SkyLiving by Allure Ventures, that gives buyers the option to sell the unit back to the developer at the original price, or lease the unit back, ensuring cash flow if the buyer is an investor. Back in 2021, Square Nine had sold 200 units at the Belvedere, at the original price. They'd held back the penthouses, hoping to get an even higher, price and chose to rent out the units at the podium level. Now, they're selling all the units, including the rental. Mr. Good said that servicing the debt on the remaining 77 units would have amounted to about $300,000 a month for the developer. Instead of paying a lender, they'd rather sell off the units at cost or even slightly below and take their money and move on to finding their own deals on reduced-price development sites, said Mr. Good. 'It's no big deal. There are 275 homes in the building. They still made money – they sold [about] 200 at a good price. … Everybody wins, the developer made money,' said Mr. Good. He expects to do several more Condoday promotions this summer. He said he enjoys doing them, because his usual job is 'making developers rich.' 'And 70 per cent of our buyers are first-time homebuyers.' Barrett Sprowson, senior vice-president of sales and marketing for Peterson Group, called the GST break 'a great first step' in a surprisingly severe market downturn. His company has a 69-unit Oakridge project called the Ashleigh that they are starting construction on, but Mr. Sprowson said they wouldn't have been started if it had been a 400-unit building. 'It's certainly the most protracted downturn we've seen. That's the thing that makes it hard, and that's why the cracks in the industry are showing up, because it's been so protracted. No one really thought it would be this long,' he said. 'I was encouraged by Carney's housing platform in that it seemed there'd been some listening to things the industry has been saying for a while.' Government could help with a break on high development fees and also incentivizing the investor to get back into the market, he said. Mr. Sprowson said the investor plays a role in driving sales and has been too often vilified. The foreign buyer, too, serves a role at the high end of the market, he said. Matthew McClenaghan, president of Edgar Development, said his company is about to start construction on 138 units of rental in Port Moody, B.C. He's confident in rental, but thinks it's a good time to hold off on condos. 'We all are watching to see which presales launches are achieving a modest level of success,' he said. 'I have been in this industry for over 25 years. I have seen this movie before. We, as an industry, run faster than buyers do. While the story is that there is an abundance of new homes on the market now, after these get absorbed, there will be little in the pipeline to replace it.'
National Post
37 minutes ago
- National Post
CyberQP and Pax8 Accelerate Global Growth Across APAC, ANZ, and North America
Article content VANCOUVER, British Columbia — CyberQP, a leader in Zero Trust Helpdesk Security, today announced the expansion of its relationship with Pax8, the leading cloud commerce marketplace. CyberQP and Pax8, together, will accelerate growth and extend access to CyberQP solutions across the APAC, ANZ, and North American regions. Article content Big news! CyberQP and Pax8 are expanding globally across APAC, ANZ, and North America. MSPs can now access Zero Trust Helpdesk Security directly through the Pax8 Marketplace, making secure access management simpler, smarter, and more scalable. Article content This global expansion is the result of growing demand for CyberQP's comprehensive platform, which consolidates privileged access management (PAM) and end-user access management (EAUM) into a single, easy-to-use solution for help desk security. Article content 'Pax8 will be instrumental in helping us scale across the MSP ecosystem, and we're thrilled to build on that momentum globally,' said Mateo Barraza, CyberQP CEO. 'Together, we're making Zero Trust security accessible, practical, and profitable for service providers around the world.' Article content Through this expanded alliance, MSPs and IT providers in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Australia/New Zealand (ANZ), and broader North American (NORAM) regions will gain access to CyberQP's suite of helpdesk security solutions directly through the Pax8 marketplace. This includes core offerings such as: Article content QGuard – Privileged Access Management (PAM) provides a comprehensive platform designed to eliminate standing privileges, minimize attack surfaces, and simplify secure access. By enabling just-in-time access and enforcing role-based permissions, QGuard ensures least privilege is applied by default. High-risk administrative and service account credentials are automatically rotated, mitigating risks from insider threats, keylogging, and credential-stuffing attacks. QDesk – End-User Access Management (EUAM) streamlines end-user elevation, identity verification, password resets, and account management into one powerful platform. Eliminate standing privileges, verify identities instantly, and empower users to resolve issues on their own—while IT handles account tasks effortlessly within the ticketing system. Article content 'CyberQP delivers the kind of security innovation that's purpose-built for the MSP channel,' said Rob Rae, Corporate Vice President of Community and Partner Experience. 'This expansion into new markets enables our global partners to better protect their customers while driving operational efficiency and growth.' Article content As cyber threats continue to evolve, access to CyberQP solutions on the Pax8 Marketplace ensures IT service providers across the globe have the tools they need to meet compliance mandates, reduce risk, and protect critical infrastructure, without adding complexity or overhead. Article content About Pax8 Article content Pax8 Article content is the technology marketplace of the future, linking partners, vendors and small to midsized businesses (SMBs) through AI-powered insights and comprehensive product support. With a global partner ecosystem of nearly 40,000 managed service providers, Pax8 empowers SMBs worldwide by providing software and services that unlock their growth potential and enhance their security. Committed to innovating cloud commerce at scale, Pax8 drives customer acquisition and solution consumption across its entire ecosystem. Article content CyberQP redefines Zero Trust Helpdesk Security with leading-edge Privileged Access Management (PAM) and End-User Access Management (EUAM) solutions. This unified platform enables secure elevated access for both technicians and end users, along with robust self-serve and identity verification capabilities. Backed by SOC 2 Type 2 certification, CyberQP empowers IT professionals to eliminate identity and privileged access security risks, enforce compliance, and enhance operational efficiency. Article content Article content Article content Contacts Article content Media Article content Article content Paul Redding Article content Article content Article content
