April 6, 2009
Economy at a Glance — April 7, 2009
Canada’s city labour markets and employment insurance claims
Prepared by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist, CanaData
Who’s at the top of the leader board for employment growth among large cities in Canada? Now that’s a surprise - it’s St. John’s, Newfoundland. Nor is that the end of the story with respect to Atlantic Region labour markets. Three East Coast cities have unemployment rates below the 7.7% national average: Halifax (5.9%), Saint John N.B. (6.4%) and St. John’s (7.4%). Moreover, those levels beat Montréal (8.1%) and Toronto (8.3%). The recession has changed the country with the centre now in the most distress.
In the West, the set of labour market statistics in the tables below show Calgary and Edmonton continuing to perform okay. However, those results are relative to the rest of the country. They do not take into account the boom conditions that existed a year ago. A better measure of the direction of change can be found in employment insurance (EI) claims. Year-over-year EI claims in Calgary are +61.7% and in Edmonton, +48.9%. This explains why the housing markets in those two cities are in such crisis.
It is in southwestern Ontario that the biggest problems lurk. Seven of the 11 worst performing labour markets in the country lie along the Highway 401-QEW corridors. This is the nation’s manufacturing heartland. It’s where all of the auto assembly plants are located, as well as steelmaking and just about every other kind of manufacturing. The litany of EI woes starts in Windsor (+81.6% year over year), then proceeds on to London (+70.3%), Kitchener (+70.0%), Hamilton (+69.0%) and Toronto (+48.3%).
No wonder the just-released Ontario budget included several provisions to try to help the industrial base of the province. Elsewhere in the country, Vancouver (+55.0%) and Victoria (+59.3%) have seen big jumps in EI claims. Montréal is another major city with a weakening labour market (-1.6% for jobs year over year), although its EI numbers are only +12.7%. As has been the case for the past couple of years, Regina and Saskatoon remain among the few urban centres in the country with safe job prospects so far.
For more articles by Alex Carrick on the Canadian and U.S. economies, visit his blog and Market Insights.
Based on average of latest three months, unadjusted data.
Data source: Statistics Canada/Tables: Reed Construction Data – CanaData.
