Prince George and central interior unemploynment rate is quite low considering the lumber industry problems. Must has some other industry picking up the slack.

After you are no longer reciving EI benefits you are no longer counted . That's why the numbers havn't changed. If they were to actually count the people not working it would show how little control the gov'ts have over the econmey. Also show their ineptitude. But Grodos crew is well looked after with their 25% pay increase.

We are all a part of the global economy. We have nothing to do but cut down the trees and dig for minerals. Nobody needs our wood and no need for metals if nobody wants it.

It probably could be the turning point in our society, where the haves and the have nots become a bigger spread. Lots of people will be turning to crime to support their families and or just themselves as fathers abandon the family.

Worst case scenerio is that the US does not inject money to kick start their economy. In fact the world should be loaning them the money to get it going.

This EI statistic is a number that tells us what percentage of people who are eligable for EI benefits are currently collecting those benefits.

This EI 'unemployment' does not tell us what the true unemployment level is. The government doesn't collect that stat anymore because its irrelevant to them as it would bring its evil twin cousin 'accountability' along with it. We could be in the mother of all recessions with 50% unemployment and the benefit collectors could still be rather small 10% after the initial shock and things settle out... ir would all depend on the ratio of collectors to contributors.

Perhaps we need to rephrase what the EI eligable benefit collectors actually are... and not call them the official unemployed anymore, but rather a sub class of the unemployed and more accurately the insured unemployed.

Perhaps we need to be talking about the eligible to work unemployed and underemployed as the important facts. Then we can say we have 1800 eligible to work doctors in training per year turned away in BC from our medical schools and ask the question... why? We could also do the total wanting to work or in need of work and break it down between occupations... rather than just track the insured unemployed... but that would require an efficient way to track this which would require bureaucracy that could interact and share the required data between the training institutions and professional bodies as well as the welfare agencies and other social agencies that track these people between the cracks that currently are not an official statistic.

Shining the light on this stuff causes accountability and our corpocracy in power is not geared for accountability anymore... especially when it crosses bureaucratic kingdoms of the patrician class, so we probably can't expect much for change anytime soon imo.