By The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Statistics Canada is expected to report that the economy created jobs for the third consecutive month when it issues the most recent labour force survey on Friday.

But even though the consensus of economists predicts 10,000 net new jobs were added in October, they caution they are growing increasingly skeptical that the labour market survey is presenting a true picture of the economy's recovery.

Economists note that while the labour force survey gets wide media play and influences markets, a lesser-known industry survey may be more reliable at this time of instability.

And the industry survey is showing the jobs are still being lost in Canada.

In the last month reporter, the industry data suggests that companies shed 110,000 jobs in August, a month when the labour force survey told Canadians 27,000 jobs were created.

Rarely have the two surveys varied by such a wide margin, say economists, cautioning Canadians to take monthly data with a large grain of salt.