More plentiful jobs and rising wages are drawing more people into the workforce and encouraging others who might have left to stay. In addition, business-sector productivity growth, which had been disappointing during the expansion, moved up in the first three quarters of 2018. Rising productivity allows wages to increase without adding to inflation pressures.
In New France and other North American colonies, the value of local currency vis-à-vis foreign currencies was typically set by the government and altered in response to economic imperatives. A similar approach characterized the Bretton Woods system of pegged but adjustable exchange rates, which defined the international monetary order in the period following the Second World War.