Is it time to get rid of this indicator as the only measure of employment? I would like to see at least the raw data of:

1. total potential labour force

2. total employed full time – male and female count

3. total employed part time – male and female count

4. total employed but underemployed – male and female count.

5. similar stats on those receiving employment insurance payments.

6. total and average paid out for employment insurance.

True Gus; like the man said “some” ??? withdrew from the workforce?! Ambiguous percentages like they use now lend themselves to way too much spin by politicians.

Should have gone down for November, December because of Christmas, etc; however the numbers should start to go up for Jan, Feb, March. Those are the slow months in retail.

I can see construction being up somewhat, and education services?? However not sure where the manufacturing comes in, unless it is machine shops and steel fabricating, supplying Kitimat, Tumbler Ridge, and Ft McMurray.

Something else to consider, the price of lumber is at a 5 year high and mills in the region are adding shifts as well as loggers ramping up production. It is expected that forestry is going into an upswing for the next few years and a sizeable increase in the workforce will be needed.

Palopu,

you fail to mention Mt Milligan and its spin off effects. I read somewhere that there is as many as 1100 people working on the construction of the mine, as well as virtually every machine shop and supplier in PG getting spin offs.

Have to give kudos to the Christy & the Liberals no matter how much dirt you want to throw at it.

I’d like to see the stats for youth unemployment too. I’ve heard that in some countries such as Spain and others, unemployment amongst the youth is as high as 50%

Just wondering how BC and Canada stacks up against that.

Any modern country that needs 100% employment to produce and distribute 100% of the goods and services its citizens need and desire is a country riddled with inefficiency.

socred,

is there anything you can’t put a negative slant on?

What is negative about that very obvious truth, Albus?

Obviously the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing in governments.

Many of the stats that Gus is talking about can be found through Service Canada &/or the Province itself. Even the public can ask for it. The employment councilor/job search agencies etc have been funded by the province for a few years now. There are people in the governments who actually keep tabs on this information. If I am not mistaken each agency has certain information they need to gather from their clients and is uploaded/reported monthly to the governments.

Another item I would like to see on the list is for First Nations and others in a per capita ratio etc. And no I am not being racists – sheesh

It is called Labour Market Reaseaarch/Information. The information Gus mentions is sent out mainly in Stats Canada figures down the road……One needs to do their own digging to obtain it from monthly stats but it can be done.

Obvious truth Socred? Only in your warped world.

Your statement is so full of holes its funny. For example, does 100% employment mean each and every person works? Nope, it means each and every employable person works. What if our retired workforce was 50%of the population? And our under 18 was 25% of our population? Then only 25% of our citizens would account for 100% employment, but they have to provide 100% of our goods and services.

Only in your world would 25% of the population working yet supplying 100% of our needs be considered an inefficiency.

I meant of the ’employable’ workforce, Albus. Not those who are retired, or under age, disabled, etc.

It is an obvious fact that we do NOT need 100% of the EMPLOYABLE workforce working to produce and distribute 100% of what we consume today.

We are already capable of producing far more than we could EVER consume with only a part, and an ever declining part, of the ’employable’ workforce actually working.

And already a great deal of that ’employable’ workforce that is currently employed really produces nothing useful at all, and is often a detriment to the overall efficiency of those who do. Not because they’re individually lazy, which some may or may not be, but because we insist on ‘making work’ as a moral requirement for distributing an income. This is in no ways necessary in any ‘economic’ sense.

Whether you like it or not, the world has been working at putting its people out of work for well over a century. In 1900 it took 50% of the ’employable’ workforce employed in agriculture just to grow enough food to feed themselves and everyone else that wasn’t.

Today it takes less than 3% to do the same thing, and there’s more food grown to feed more mouths than ever before in human history. The same phenomenon exists in EVERY other industry. And the call is for still more productivity. What do you really think that means in your warped, narrow minded, little Liberal-loving noggin, Albus. Still MORE overall product output for LESS overall ‘labour’ input, no? Or perhaps you have a different definition of what productivity actually is.

socred,

and you call me narrow minded? Yeeshh!

Anyone who cannot discern the simple difference between a ‘moral’ proposition and an ‘economic’ one, nor between ‘inflation’ and ‘prosperity’, and fervently believes that no one (other than himself, of course) should ever be made economically comfortable without being made physically uncomfortable first, is obviously narrow minded. Or retarded.

Perhaps ‘puritanical’ would be a better description than ‘narrow minded’, though they’re really one and the same thing. The Puritans were people who elevated ‘work’, a mere ‘means’ to an ‘end’, into an ‘end’ in itself. The only sane ‘end’ of work is consumption. And anything that achieves that ‘end’ by minimising the ‘means’ to it should be desirable. Or is all the progress we’ve made in that regard undesirable?

I rest my case.