Canadians kept spending in June according to card transaction data

Canadian consumers spent cautiously but consistently in June, according to new transaction data from RBC Economics, offering a snapshot of a household sector still absorbing higher energy costs while finding room for concerts, dinners out and new clothes. For staffing firms and their clients, the report is less a single data point than a map of where labour demand is likely to concentrate and where it will keep lagging through the rest of the summer.

RBC’s Consumer Spending Tracker, published July 9 and built from the bank’s proprietary database of anonymized cardholder transactions, found that core retail sales, a measure that strips out gasoline and auto purchases, rose 0.5 percent in June on a three-month average, matching May’s pace. That stability, rather than acceleration, is the headline: Canadian households are not pulling back, but they are not opening their wallets much wider either. It is the kind of data pattern that tends to produce steady, rather than surging, demand for consumer-facing labour.

Where the growth is coming from

Economists Abbey Xu and Rachel Battaglia found that discretionary goods spending posted the strongest gain among major categories on a three-month basis, while discretionary services —such as restaurants, entertainment, personal care, rebounded after a softer May. Entertainment and arts spending rose 1.7 percent, the second-strongest showing in the report, a gain the authors linked partly to summer events including the FIFA World Cup. Dining spending increased 0.7 percent, reversing recent weakness as warmer weather drew Canadians back out.

For staffing agencies serving hospitality, events, retail and food service, this is a meaningful signal. A rebound in discretionary services spending typically shows up a few weeks later as increased shift postings, event-staffing requests and seasonal retail recruitment, particularly in markets hosting World Cup-related programming or summer festival calendars. Firms with hospitality or event-staffing desks may want to treat June’s discretionary rebound as an early indicator to firm up seasonal recruiting pipelines now, rather than waiting for client requisitions to spike in late summer.

Clothing spending also extended its positive trend, according to the tracker, which bodes reasonably well for seasonal retail staffing demand, though the gain was measured, not explosive, consistent with the report’s broader picture of “cautiously optimistic” but selective households.

The costs still weighing on households

Not every category told the same story. Gasoline spending rose 2.3 percent on a three-month average, the strongest of any category, driven by oil prices that remained elevated even as pump prices eased roughly 10 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in June. That energy cost pressure helps explain why households are being described as “selective” about bigger purchases even as overall spending holds up: more of the household budget is going to essentials, even with a modest 0.5 percent rise in ex-gasoline essential spending that RBC called a “welcome improvement.”

For staffing firms, sustained energy-cost pressure is worth tracking alongside the Bank of Canada’s Q2 Business Outlook Survey, which flagged surprisingly resilient firm sentiment amid the same oil-price shock. Together, the two reports suggest a labour market where employer confidence is holding up better than consumer purchasing power, a divergence that can translate into cautious but not frozen hiring, particularly in sectors sensitive to household discretionary spending.

Travel was the clear outlier. Spending in that category continued to contract on a three-month average, though the RBC economists noted the pace of decline moderated in June, and households “may be warming to travel deeper into summer.” Staffing desks serving the travel and tourism sector should read this as a lagging-not-dead signal: demand has not turned positive, but the trend line is improving, which is typically the point in a cycle when hiring managers begin testing renewed demand with limited, cautious postings rather than broad campaigns.

A provincial divide with staffing implications