The highlight on the economic calendar on Friday comes from Canada with the release of the jobs report for June. Oftentimes this report is released at the same time as non-farm payrolls and is badly overshadowed but it gets the spotlight alone for this edition.

The consensus is for a flat reading following +8.8K in May. The unemployment report is foercast to rise to an uncomfortable 7.1% from 7.0%. That would be the highest since 2021 and — excluding the pandemic — the highest since May 2016. It’s steadily climbed from a low of 4.8% in July 2022.

As for the loonie, it made some progress on Thursday but underperformed — significantly — the other commodity currencies. That’s at least partly due to a 2% decline in oil prices. I spoke with Reuters about the loonie earlier today and some of the worries I have about trade negotiations, especially in light of this week’s higher US tariffs and the blowup with Brazil.

USD/CAD has been consolidating for the past six weeks but I expect that will ultimately resolve to the downside and test 1.34 before year end.

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