There is some concern out there that the unemployment rate remains too high in many of Canada’s urban centres. In Moncton it was 9.3% in April 2021, Saint John 10.2%. The median unemployment rate among the country’s 35 CMAs was 7.9% up two+ percentage points from the 5.8% in April 2019.
I’m not as worried about the unemployment rate right now. There are a lot of twitchy things going on in the workforce including some who are still worried about the pandemic and reluctant to work and some who are still ‘better off’ on the government support programs.
I’m more interested in the size of the workforce (that includes those who are employed and unemployed). And that metric tells a different story. Comparing April 2019 to April 2021 (by April 2020 there were already pandemic effects showing up in the data), Halifax and Moncton have seen strong workforce growth. There are 5,400 more in the Moncton CMA workforce today than two years ago and 19,600 more in the Halifax workforce. The Saint John CMA doesn’t fare as well in this metric but in the past 12 months has added +3,000 to its total workforce which is a positive trend.
Eventually the unemployment rate will come down but given all the upheaval in the workforce right now - remote work, certain industries in structural employment decline, the increase of Boomers heading into retirement, the challenges with immigration during the pandemic, distorting (but not necessarily negative) income subsidies - it’s important to try and tease out the signal from the noise.
Nice. Now what's going on in London?