Canadian wholesale prices continue to decline, with price decreases significantly smaller than what is typical for this period in the year, according to Canadian Black Book (CBB)’s latest COVID-19 update for November 11, 2020.
“Although consumer demand for vehicles is certainly impaired by the impact of COVID-19, the shortage of vehicles and continued demand for export units have been keeping prices strong,” said CBB in its report.
Car segments were down in wholesale value, on average by 0.26% ($55) last week, while trucks were down 0.19%. The two car segments that were up are full-size cars (+0.40%) and premium sports cars (+0.01%), while the biggest decreases came from the sub-compact car and compact car categories.
For the truck segment, sub-compact luxury crossovers (+0.11%), full-size vans (+0.03%), small pickups (+0.02%), and full-size pickups (+0.42%) were all up. The biggest decreases came from compact crossover/SUVs and sub-compact crossovers.
In the U.S. both car and truck segments were down where wholesale used vehicle prices are concerned, with cars declining a considerable amount — 0.84%, and trucks down by 0.52%.
“For the first week of November 2020, we continue to see a softening trend in prices. Typically, depreciation in the fall of a normal year is much more than what we have been seeing this year,” said CBB. “However, the recent declines in values of both cars and trucks follows a period of four weeks when CBB has noted that values were remarkably flat and stable.”
In other news, unemployment trends in Canada indicate that there is recovery but it’s slow, with the rate at 8.9% — down only 0.1% from September. Overall there are 1.8 million Canadians unemployed, which is up 60.2% from February’s record low levels, pre-pandemic.
CBB pulled the information from Statistics Canada’s monthly labour force survey. It covers data from October 11-17 and indicates that 53.3% of Canadians who were unemployed and searching for work “were living in a household reporting difficulties meeting necessary expenses,” said CBB.
