We notice you are visiting from a U.S. Internet provider. 
09/04/2010 -
Canadian merchants, prepare your POS terminals: employment continued to rise in March, setting up an increase in consumers' spending power in turn.Statistics Canada reported Friday that the economy added 18,000 jobs in March, though the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent.
Employment has been steadily gaining since July 2009, and since that month the economy has added 176,000 new jobs.
The industries with the best employment performance were found to be natural resources, professional, scientific and technical services, and construction.
The best-performing provinces were Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan, which added 10,000, 6,000 and 3,300 jobs in March, respectively.
Average hourly wages also increased by 2.2 percent, compared to the previous year.
"That's a job market recovery on par with only Australia as most other economies can only dream of job gains like this," said economists at Scotia Capital in a note to clients.
Statistics Canada recently gave another indication that Canadian merchants may soon see an uptick in their payment processing activity thanks to strong consumer spending - the country's real gross domestic product rose by 0.6 percent in January, its fifth consecutive monthly increase.
