That doesn't seem to unreasonable IMO. A lot of the old gaurd are in their late 50's and may just retire. I think we very well could see a substaintal drop in the employment base with very few actual lay-offs. If we're lucky it will be a soft landing with a solid base for future growth. Question is where will the growth come from and how fast?

2500 lost jobs seems high end projections. I would think more like half that unless they are including all of Northern BC north of Kamloops. I think 600 mill jobs, and the same number of logging jobs. More if Inter-con scales down, then add another 500 for max 1700 IMO.

Ontario just got rid of mandatory retirement at age 65, and you can bet that BC will not be too far behind. One should not assume that people in the Forest Industry are in a hurry to retire, a lot of them would prefer to keep working. Once mandatory retirement is out the window that is what will happen. Younger people will go elsewhere for jobs.

The future growth will not come from anywhere. We just went through 5 years of a booming forest industrie with mills working 3 shifts etc; and this is now in the decline. Add to this the downsizing that will come because of the beetle kill, and the lumber export agreement., and you have a recipe for further downsizing.

There has been no significant growth in this area in the last 10/15 years and I cannot see any in the future. We are on the tail end of the Super Store-Wal Mart-Home Depot-Cdn Tire expansions, and all the other mega chain stores that have moved into the area. The population forcasts for the North Central Interior show little or no increase in population.

Construction in the area will decline for the simple reason that almost everything that has to be built has been built. Stores, Schools, University, CN Centre, Library, Civic Centre, Art Centre, Museums, Co-Generation plants at the pulp Mills. Husky Oil refinery expansion, etc; You name it and it has been built. We might build a half assed bridge, and twin the Simon Fraser,build a co-generatin plant and have some expansion on 97 South and 16 West, and build a few houses in the new sub-divisions being opened up, but other that that I cant see any growth.

The added jobs in Prince Rupert from the Port Expansion will hardly be enough to replace the 700 to 1000 jobs that Alcan will get rid of once the get the go ahead to upgrade their plant and sell surplus power to Hydro. So the best you can hope for in that area, and this area is the status quo.

Palopu - A Performing Arts Centre has yet to be built -- George Paul tells me it's still on his list, and he wants to cross it off. He's assured me he'll work to that end in a capacity other than City Manager, obviously.

I understand George is moving to the Island .... not the Cayman islands .... so I doubt his interest in a performing arts centre here will be any greater than it has been while he has been here .....

How many people will be employed here after the beetle cut is over is simple.

Take the number of people employed before the beetle ..... subtract a percentage for the normal downsizing which has been occuring for decades due to the industry becoming more efficient by tech changes ...... then subtract the number whose jobs will be lost because the amount of available wood will be less than it was before the beetle.....

The number that will be laid off or lost through attrition will be that number subtracted from the number currently working.

The problem is, finding reliable numbers ... *smile* ... good luck!!!

Quoting from the above: "It means there’s still forested land to harvest on a SUSTAINABLE basis in the years ahead, although there will be fewer stands available."

What is neglected is that the sustainability curve has dropped to a lower level. Sure it is sustainable. So is water in a fixed reservoir which has just been dropped by a few metres sustainable if people drawing on it move away, or people use less water.

I wonder if anyone else finds it interesting how we always seem to inflate the number of jobs an indutry or a development will create as a result of multiplier or spin-off effects, but we conveniently forget about that in the reverse situation .... ;-)

That would not have anything to do with political spin would it???? ... NAH, of course not! :-)

How many people will be employed here after the beetle cut is over is simple.

Take the number of people employed before the beetle ..... subtract a percentage for the normal downsizing which has been occuring for decades due to the industry becoming more efficient by tech changes ...... then subtract the number whose jobs will be lost because the amount of available wood will be less than it was before the beetle.....

The number that will be laid off or lost through attrition will be that number subtracted from the number currently working.

The problem is, finding reliable numbers ... *smile* ... good luck!!!

Quoting from the above: "It means there’s still forested land to harvest on a SUSTAINABLE basis in the years ahead, although there will be fewer stands available."

What is neglected is that the sustainability curve has dropped to a lower level. Sure it is sustainable. So is water in a fixed reservoir which has just been dropped by a few metres sustainable if people drawing on it move away, or people use less water.

I wonder if anyone else finds it interesting how we always seem to inflate the number of jobs an indutry or a development will create as a result of multiplier or spin-off effects, but we conveniently forget about that in the reverse situation .... ;-)

That would not have anything to do with political spin would it???? ... NAH, of course not! :-)

Owl, your point is taken, but I think we were all talking about primary sector jobs and not the secondary spin off jobs.

The secondary jobs are much harder to predict in an established town like PG on the downside. How many businesses that provide services go under after the fact, how many new services keep money circulating in this region, how much diversification takes place replacing things we previously imported... ect, ect? Everything else being equal the upside is much easier to predict spin off benefits. Problem on the downside is some people subsidize their loses for a while before moving on.

We need another call centre. That would create a few jobs.

Why would George Paul who worked for the City for years at a comfy salary leave Prince George and move the to island. One would think that after all the hype about how great this City is, he would set an example by staying here, and maybe moving family, relatives, and friends here.

Maybe he came for the Job and now its time to leave.

"Everything else being equal the upside is much easier to predict spin off benefits."

Why on earth would that be?

While it is relatively easy to determine if there is a new town what kind of businesses will likely form and what the threshold populations would be for them to survive and prosper, that same ease does not exist with an existing community.

Given an established community of 100,000 especially one which has gone through up and down as well as stagnation cycles, that is much more difficult to predict. One would need some actual counts of business categories in operation and the capacity they have as well as their current viability.

The PGRDC used to have information like that readily available for the asking. I have not seen any lately, but it may exist.

So, I say again, in today's situation in PG we have people saying that 100 jobs here will create another 50 or whatever. That is not typically true since the present situation may include several such service businesses who are operating a marginal business with people on shift who are not 100% occupied but have to be there in order to keep the business open. 100 new jobs in a job market with 60,000 employed is not going to make a dent, let alone result in spin off employment unless everyone is running lean and mean operations.

Conversely losing 100 jobs is not going to make much of a dent either, unless service businesses are running at the edge of viability.

So, either way is difficult to predict. So, one needs to be equitable and keep spin off jobs out of the equation in both cases, or include them in both cases.

Otherwise you will end up like Vancouver and have virtually no primary jobs and only spin off jobs .....
:-)

Now if people here could only figure out how they make that work ......