From CBC news, Job Growth Unexpectedly Stalls.
"British Columbia recorded a drop of 16,300 jobs following strong gains in the first three months of the year — pushing up its unemployment rate by half a percentage point to 4.4 per cent."
Wow-- a half-percent jump in the unemployment rate in just one month in BC. What types of jobs were lost? How's the forestry sector doing-- mills are still shutting down to reduce the volume of lumber they're putting onto the market-- this has got to be hitting forestry communities pretty hard. I'm sure that sector doesn't have any job growth...
May mill closures
April mill closures
March mill closures
14 comments:
The change in BC jobs was completely due to a loss in part-time employment, not full-time. See detailed Statscan report and here if you want more reports.
Vancouver CMA shed 20.8K jobs from last month (page 44). Also 18.4K of these went onto EI. Job loss is compared to 10K addition MOM from April 2006. But this is seasonally adjusted. Does anyone know the adjustment factor Statscan applies?
Also jobs lost are:
4K education
4K finance/real estate
7K health care
6K acommodation/food
3.5 trade
3K manufacturing
Jobs gained:
3K construction
4K forestry/mining
3K other stuff
"Jobs gained:
3K construction
4K forestry/mining
3K other stuff "
Kind of the opposite of what I expected. Weird. I think lumber prices have lots of downside still as U.S. projects complete with nothing in the pipeline.
Food for thought: unemployment is very low in Vancouver, comparable to Calgary and Edmonton. But inflation is low in BC but markedly higher in Alberta. If the labour market is so tight, why is inflation so low in BC?
Really annoying: I cannot find ANYWHERE a reference to the raw non-seasonally adjusted statscan labour data (there is a 3 month moving average NSA but that's not really that useful). There were some good discussions on US finance blogs about interpreting seasonal adjustments and how the adjusted numbers can hide things. At least there they could see the raw numbers.
7k lost in health care, and 4k in education?
You'd think any job losses in those areas would be all over the news.. unless these are people retiring, which is very possible.
"Food for thought: unemployment is very low in Vancouver, comparable to Calgary and Edmonton. But inflation is low in BC but markedly higher in Alberta. If the labour market is so tight, why is inflation so low in BC?"
The labor market in BC is tight, but a lot of employers are reluctant to raise the wages that they are offering.
Entry level employers are finding it particularly difficult to get workers. My daughter works for one, and they are constantly calling her into work to cover shifts, over and above her scheduled shifts.
They are quite short staffed, requiring them to schedule pretty thin. This makes it more stressful on the workers that do show up to work.
This increased stress level causes a higher turnover, which just adds to the problem.
But inflation is low in BC but markedly higher in Alberta
That's because rents, which are the biggest component of CPI, have risen much more in Alberta than BC.
And that's because Alberta is actually experiencing a major gain in population, as opposed to BC which has the slowest population growth rate in years.
Remember rents reflect actual demand for housing, as opposed to prices which reflect future price expectations.
As for the "tight" labour market, BC is starting to look a lot like places like Arizona and Florida, where economic growth is RE driven and creates few well paid jobs outside the RE industry. Lots of demand for McJobs but not real jobs.
And people who work in real jobs are leaving the province - or won't move to it - because they can't afford the housing, keeping the unemployment down. Places like UBC and hi tech are having trouble hiring people.
"Places like UBC and hi tech are having trouble hiring people."
...at X salary. They would have less trouble if they raised it to X + K, where K > 0.
"Really annoying: I cannot find ANYWHERE a reference to the raw non-seasonally adjusted statscan labour data (there is a 3 month moving average NSA but that's not really that useful)."
Hi Jesse. Try here. (Starts on page 43.)
Those evil conspiratorial government statisticians! They went and hid the data right there on the internet. And they thought they could get away with it!!
Hey, VHB, welcome back.
Thanks VHB. Where exactly are the unadjusted and unaveraged employment numbers in this publication? Maybe I am blind.
"Places like UBC and hi tech are having trouble hiring people."
...at X salary. They would have less trouble if they raised it to X + K, where K > 0.
The point is that they can't. High tech has to compete globally and can't pay salaries that would allow employees to buy the same house that they could in, say, Ottawa where prices are less than 1/2 as much.
As for the universities, they would have to get the extra money from the students or from Gordo. Gook luck.
High tech has to compete globally...
Salaries in Silicon Valley are higher than Vancouver. Many Vancouverites migrate south for better opportunities and higher salaries. Global salaries indeed.
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