Canada: Unemployment Rate stays unchanged at 5% in February vs. 5.1% expected

• Unemployment Rate in Canada stayed unchanged at 5% in February.
• USD/CAD trades in negative territory below 1.3800 after the data.

The data published by Statistics Canada revealed on Friday that the Unemployment Rate stayed unchanged at 5% in February. This reading came in slightly better than the market expectation of 5.1%.

Further details of the publication revealed that the Net Change in Employment came in at +21.8K in February, surpassing analysts' estimate of 10,000. Finally, the Participation Rate remained steady at 65.7%.

Market reaction

The USD/CAD came under heavy bearish pressure in the early American session and was last seen losing 0.4% on the day at 1.3773. The broad-based US Dollar weakness also seems to be forcing the pair to stay on the back foot.