The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday, Jan. 6, edition that Canada's labour market finished 2023 in the doldrums. The Globe's Mark Rendell writes that Canada added just 100 net new jobs in December, after an increase of 25,000 in November and 18,000 in October, Statistics Canada said Friday. Bay Street analysts were expecting an increase of 13,500 jobs last month. The unemployment rate remained at 5.8 per cent. The stall in job growth appears to shore up the case for the Bank of Canada to start cutting interest rates in the coming quarters. However, the BOC remains wary of rapid wage growth. Here the December data were surprisingly robust. On an annual basis, average hourly wages rose 5.4 per cent in December, up from 4.8 per cent in November and the quickest pace since last February. CIBC economist Andrew Grantham says: "December data provided a classic mixed bag of results, with some stronger than expected news in terms of wages and hours worked, alongside a weaker than anticipated headline change in employment. Because of that, today's data don't change our expectation for the timing of a first Bank of Canada interest rate cut, which we still see occurring in June this year."