Canada’s economy churned out enough jobs last month to reduce the unemployment rate by a tenth of a point.

Statistics Canada says nearly 43,000 net new jobs were created last month. Most of the jobs were part-time. But they are the best results in months, and almost double what economists had anticipated.

The other surprise in the report was that the vast majority of the new jobs went to young Canadians. The 15-24 age group has suffered from chronically-high unemployment for years, well above the national average.

There was also good news south of the border. The US economy created 192,000 jobs last month, down slightly from February, but still a respectable number.

Canada’s unemployment rate is now 6.9 per cent. It’s 6.7 in the US.