July Unemployment Rate in P.G. Down
Friday, August 9, 2013 @ 11:18 AM
Prince George, B.C. – Unemployment in Prince George was 4.5% in July, down from the 6.6% mark recorded in July of 2012.
Statistics Canada’s Vincent Ferrao says the drop was largely due to a decline in the workforce. There had been 54,200 people in the labour force in July of 2012, and last month that fell to 51,300.
As for the Cariboo region, it too saw a lower unemployment rate in July, as it came in at 5.9%, down from the 8.1% recorded in the same month a year ago. Again, Ferrao says the decline is largely due to a drop in the labour force, which saw fewer people working in the manufacturing and health sectors, while there were some increases in the Accommodation and food service industry as well as in public administration.
The provincial unemployment rate was 6.7% last month, down slightly from the 6.9% of July 2012.
Nationally the rate was sitting at 7.2%, down from the 7.3% recorded in July of 2012.
Comments
Drop in labour force. Is this because of retirement, people moving away, or giving up?
the summer construction season.
after the season, the unemployment rate will go up due to seasonal construction workers being laid off.
Then the seasonal forestry workers will be employed for the winter harvest season.
it is a shell game.
“There had been 54,200 people in the labour force in July of 2012, and last month that fell to 51,300.”
The numbers are year over year (July 2013 vs July 2012). 2900 jobs were eliminated in the past 12 months in PG! 5% decline. What happened to those jobs?
Maybe the people work in other areas, but show their address as Prince George, so PG gets the credit for the people working even though the job may be in Kitimat, or Ft McMurray. Eventually people move to where the job is, and Walla, we have a drop in jobs, even though we never had a job.
I talked to a guy awhile back and he worked for a contractor in Quesnel, he lived in Prince George, and the job was in Burns Lake, so the question is. Where does he show up on the stats??
I think the purpose of these stats is to show the number of people who are employed within a community and not the number of jobs that can be “linked” to a particular city.
So long as a city has a sustainable population of people and the people in that city are employed somewhere doing something, do these stats really matter?
Heck, with the cuts that Stats Canada has had recently, how do we even know that the stats are reliable and/or comparable to prior periods? Has the exact same methodology been used to collect the data? Has the same rigour been applied when analyzing the data? Has the resulting analysis been tested and verified to the same extent as it has been in the past?
Regardless of what the data says, what do people see when they travel around PG and the region? Are there lots of new housing starts? Are new schools popping up? Are there major construction projects occurring? Are new businesses coming to town? I’d suggest those indicators are just as relevant when analyzing the economic health of the area. It’s really hard to rely on one stat as an “Ah ha!” indicator.
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