You're not the only one confused about where the economy is going — the experts are too

Should Twitter employees turfed from their jobs by their new boss come looking for work in Canada? Friday's stunning jobs numbers might make you think that was a good idea.

While the U.S. economy, where employment numbers were also released on Friday, created 261,000 jobs, Canada cranked out 108,000 — despite having only one tenth the U.S. population. 

As the company's self-designated "Chief Twit", Elon Musk was engineering Twitter-wide employment devastation just as Canada was creating jobs.

Musk wasn't alone. Tech darlings including Amazon, Apple, Lyft and Stripe have announced layoffs and hiring freezes to prepare for a coming recession. In Canada, Hootsuite and Dapper Labs cut staff.

In her economic statement last week, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, this time wearing her finance minister's hat, repeated her recent warnings that Canada must prepare for recession. 

"Canada cannot avoid the global slowdown," said Freeland, "but we will be ready."

She also declared that Canada was strong and would get through any economic troubles in good shape; echoing former prime minister Wilfrid Laurier's 1904 declaration the 20th century belonged to Canada, Freeland put dibs on the 21st.

WATCH | Ottawa's plan for those hardest hit by cost-of-living increases:

Contradictory signals have become the rule rather than the exception as economists, businesses and political leaders struggle — and sometimes fail — to winkle out a pattern in today's data to tell us a true story about the future. No wonder the rest of us have trouble doing it.

Friday's huge job numbers showed how difficult predictions are, even for specialists. Not one of the economists polled by Bloomberg came close. Unemployment data is notoriously variable, and Tu Nguyen, who forecast that jobs would actually shrink, was not the only person to be shocked.

"Wow, we certainly did not expect this," said Nguyen, an economist with the financial firm RSM Canada. "Despite all the talk about recession … we are certainly not in a recession right now if you look at the jobs numbers."

So are we getting a recession or not? People who are supposed to be in the know are still debating. The word stagflation keeps popping up, and last week U.S. billionaire Paul Singer warned of hyperinflation, a kind of price-growth-on-steroids that knocks an economy flat.

At more moderate ranges, a preference for inflation or rising interest rates, depends, like Freeland, on which hat you are wearing. Borrowers dislike rate hikes, while workers, shoppers and savers dislike inflation. But since many Canadians are all of those things, it is hard to choose. 

For employers considering the need for layoffs, workers desperately trying to catch up with rising prices, for homeowners and market traders, the lack of clarity makes everything harder.