OTTAWA — The Canadian economy is not only creating more jobs, but it is also creating better jobs, according to a report from CIBC.

The bank's employment quality index found that the quality of jobs being created in Canada has improved over the last 12 months, and the measure is now back to pre-recession levels.

Canada was one of the first among advanced countries to come out of the recession in the summer of 2009, and one of the first to see a rebound in employment.

But initially, those jobs tended to be part-time and in lower paying sectors of the service industry.

In the last 12 months, Canada has added an impressive 283,000 jobs. CIBC said the quality of those jobs have also improved, by 2.7 per cent measured against their index.

The bank says there's been an improvement in the number of full-time jobs created over part-time.

There has also been a strong increase in paid employment rather than self-employment.

The the biggest mover of the index, CIBC said, is that new high-paying jobs have outnumbered low-paying jobs by about three-to-one.

The ongoing improvement in employment quality suggests that on average every new job generates more buying power than was the case a year ago, CIBC economist Benjamin Tal said.