Friday, September 06, 2013

BC Employment August 2013

Below are some graphs highlighting Vancouver's and BC's employment situation. Here are the historical employment, participation, and unemployment rates (CANSIM tables 282-0117 and 282-0087) (click on chart for larger image)





Below are three interesting plots, first BC population growth, residential units under construction, and the construction unemployment rate, followed by a scatterplot of the construction unemployment rate versus residential units under construction (on semilog):
Not surprisingly when units under construction are low, construction unemployment is elevated and vice versa. Also interesting is that high construction unemployment is partially ameliorated by labour mobility (captured by falling population growth).

The final graph is more scattered but nonetheless interesting. A few years ago BC Stats highlighted that unemployment differentials between provinces, most notably between BC and Alberta, leads to increased labour mobility. The plot below is between population growth and the BC-Alberta unemployment rate differential (spread). Current BC-AB unemployment differentials have been approximately 2.0% since the beginning of 2011, and current population growth is approximately 40,000/year. Net migration to Alberta (ie people leaving BC for Alberta minus people leaving Alberta for BC) is currently about 11,000 people annualized.

2 comments:

fishonhook said...

We get the old retired folk ready to use the healthcare system from Alberta and they get the young families paying taxes. Nice!

SJ said...

Correction:
We used to "get the old retired folk ready to use the healthcare system from Alberta" but NOT like the good old days.

Those savvy retirees now stay near the grandkids for Alberta summer, not having to pay healthcare premiums & PST, and instead buy US sunbelt for under a 100g's for winter.