By Heather Scoffield, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Federal cabinet ministers blitzed the country with economic stimulus announcements Friday in the face of dismal employment numbers that leave the Harper government far short of its job-creation targets.

Canada's economy shed 43,000 jobs in October, dropping the total number of employed to 16,794,800. That's at least 331,000 jobs less than the target the federal government set in its January budget for this point in the year.

Ottawa had projected that stimulus and economic recovery would push employment levels to at least 17,126,000 by now. The quarterly calculations were made by the parliamentary budget officer using data provided in the federal budget.

"Today's numbers show just how fragile the global economic recovery remains and we're not out of the woods yet," Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said in Toronto.

"That's why our No. 1 priority continues to be implementing Canada's Economic Action Plan - a plan that is creating new jobs and providing tax relief while assisting those who have been hardest hit by the global recession."

The stimulus plan claims to be well on its way to creating or maintaining 220,000 jobs by the end of 2010.

However, an analysis by The Canadian Press of 4,833 stimulus announcements shows little correlation with employment rates. Rather, the analysis suggests the $16-billion stimulus package is weighted toward Conservative ridings, regardless of employment rate.

It also shows that projects have been slow to be approved in some key provinces, notably Quebec and British Columbia.

"Conservatives were more preoccupied with handing out giant cheques with Conservative party logos on them than they were with actually getting infrastructure stimulus shovels in the ground," charged Liberal MP John McCallum, the party's finance critic.

Finley was one of many federal ministers spread out across the country trumpeting the Conservative government's job creation programs Friday.

In Nova Scotia, Transport Minister John Baird and Defence Minister Peter MacKay appeared in Halifax with top provincial officials to announce $25 million in federal funding for highway and bridge improvements.

In Quebec, Economic Development Minister Denis Lebel was flanked by two provincial ministers in Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! to highlight $242-million in federal money to widen the highway to New Brunswick.

Both the Nova Scotia and Quebec announcements involve money set aside in 2006 for major infrastructure projects, rather than new money announced in this year's budget.

In Toronto, parliamentary secretary David Anderson put $17.8 million toward expanding market opportunities for the beleaguered forestry sector.

And in Headingly, Man., Steven Fletcher, Ottawa's minister of state for democratic reform, appeared with the new premier Greg Selinger to tout $5.65 million for highway improvements.

The announcements came as Canada's job market took a step back. Employment dropped by 43,200 positions in October, driving the unemployment rate up two notches to 8.6 per cent.

The recession has wiped out 400,000 jobs in Canada in the past year, a steep decline of 2.3 per cent of the workforce.

The federal government has earmarked $16 billion over two years in an attempt to reverse the losses.

But there is no way of knowing whether the stimulus money is actually creating jobs, where the jobs are, or how many there may be. Ottawa did not ask any of the recipients of the money to say how many jobs they intended to create or save, nor is there any attempt to measure how effective the spending has been.

Rather, the government relies on a rule of thumb to estimate how many jobs will flow from its spending. In the United States, officials use four different economic models and also collect job-creation information directly from contractors.

Canada's parliamentary budget officer has been trying to assess the job impact, but has not been able to gather enough information from the federal government to come to any conclusions.

"It remains unclear as to whether the domestic fiscal stimulus enacted thus far has been a major causal factor in the recent stabilization of some indicators of economic activity in Canada," the budget watchdog said in a recent report.

Employment in the construction industry - the main beneficiary of federal stimulus money - grew by 11,200 positions in October. But that's a drop in the bucket compared to the losses over the past year. Construction jobs have declined by 72,500 or 5.8 per cent.