Hot off the press is the latest batch of not-so-hot B.C. employment numbers from Statistics Canada. The data for February generally show the provincial economy moving in the right direction, albeit at a relatively slow pace.
Between January and February, the number of people employed in the province grew slightly, by 0.1%. During the same period those in the labour force -- either working or looking for work -- declined by 0.1%. As a result, B.C.’s headline economic indicator – the unemployment rate – fell by almost 3%, to 6.7%.
Interestingly, the labour force declined between January and February in the face of a growing population, meaning the provincial participation rate fell slightly (by 0.2%).
The gains in employment were uneven across sectors. The greatest increase was in B.C.’s resurgent forestry and logging sector (+7.9%), followed by agriculture, fishing and hunting (+6.2%), and, perhaps surprisingly given the unending discussions of its ongoing demise, manufacturing (+5.6%). These gains were offset by declines in the mining, oil and gas sector (-3.5%) and finance, real estate and professional, scientific and technical services (-3.3%).
Full-time employment drove the increase in employment gains, rising by 0.2% in the first two months of this year; this was offset by a 0.3% decline in part-time work. In terms of class of workers, the 1.7% decline in public sector employment was met by a 0.4% increase in private sector jobs and 1% increase in self-employment, resulting in the overall 0.1% gain in employment province-wide.
Regionally within B.C. there were fewer winners than losers in terms of recent employment change, with almost all economic regions in B.C. experiencing month-over-month declines. Based on a three-month moving average [email protected], the Kootenay region saw the greatest decline at -3.7%, while the Thompson-Okanagan was the only gainer, up 0.3%.
Outside of the Lower Mainland/Southwest, all regions saw unemployment rates increase in February, ranging from relatively small (1.7% in Vancouver Island/Coast) to the more significant (a 23% increase in the northeast).
While short-term in nature, these data provide a snapshot of B C.’s economy that shows both slow and uneven growth. •
