Hamilton’s ‘healthy’ economy still leaving some people behind
Unemployment, labour force participation rates vary greatly across neighbourhoods
BY MOST INDICATIONS, Hamilton’s economy is “healthy” and “growing”, yet some of the city’s residents are being left behind.
The unemployment rate for the Hamilton census metropolitan area was better than the national and provincial averages in March 2018. Same goes for the labour force participation rate. And, for the sixth straight year, the city issued more than $1 billion in building permits in 2017.
But the impact of these successes varies greatly from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, according to the Hamilton Community Foundation’s Vital Signs 2018 report.
“It’s a very healthy and growing economy with the caveat that it’s still not available to everybody to participate,” said Glen Norton, Hamilton’s director of economic development.
The unemployment rate for Hamilton’s CMA in March 2018 was 5.3 per cent, which is lower than the provincial and national averages of 5.5 per cent and 5.8 per cent respectively.
As the Spectator previously reported in its investigation All About Us — A Portrait of Hamilton, there was an almost 14 per cent difference in unemployment rates from one end of the city to the other.
The highest unemployment rate
was 16.2 per cent in the area bounded by Sherman Avenue North, the harbourfront, Ottawa Street North and the rail line north of Barton Street.
At the other end of Hamilton’s
CMA, the neighbourhood bounded by Governors Road, the County of Brant border, Jerseyville Road, Alberton Road, Garner Road, Martin Road and Binkley Road reflected the lowest unemployment rate at 2.4 per cent.
SAME GOES for the labour force participation rate, which measures the percentage of people with jobs and those who are unemployed and looking for work.
Hamilton’s labour force participate rate was 65.9 per cent in March 2018. Several neighbourhoods reported rates of more than 75 per cent, while five others saw numbers of fewer than 50 per cent, with the lowest being 44.8 per cent.
As for how to fix this disparity, there’s not a clear-cut answer.
Norton said it’s partly about awareness.
“We have people who are assuming there isn’t a job for them,” he said. “They’ve given up looking.
“We need to reach out to them and find them.”
Workforce Planning Hamilton’s Judy Travis partly attributes the decline to an aging workforce but said it’s also about skills development.
With technology, the labour market is changing rapidly, and workers that don’t have these skills need to be looking for ways to build them, including through retraining and literacy programs, she said.
“Everybody needs to embrace continuous learning ... and be open to that kind of experience,” Travis said.
While Travis acknowledges the participation rate needs to be bolstered, she also noted there appears to be a skills “mismatch” in Hamilton.
She said she’s hearing from employers who are having difficulty filling available jobs, especially in the skilled and construction trades.
“I would say lots of jobs are kind of going begging right now,” Travis said.
ACCORDING TO THIS YEAR’S
Employer One Survey, 54 per cent of employers said they had a hard to fill position, compared to 49 per cent last year. The same goes for recruitment, which 24 per cent said was “very challenging” in 2018 compared to 20 per cent the year prior, the results of the survey conducted by Workforce Planning Hamilton showed.
Overall, the city’s economy has reached the kind of diversification sought after for more than a decade, said Huzaifa Saeed, policy and research analyst with the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce.
Hamilton, which the Conference Board of Canada has said has the country’s most diversified economy for four years running, has witnessed “substantial” growth in health and social services, construction, manufacturing and retail trade.
The Vital Signs report shows retail trade and health care and social services are Hamilton’s largest employment sectors, with 65,300 and 60,000 jobs respectively in 2017. Manufacturing is still the third-largest sector, employing 49,100 last year, which is down from almost 80,000 in 2004.
The numbers of jobs in the Hamilton CMA rose to 416,300 in 2017 — an increase of 8 per cent from the year prior.
From the chamber’s perspective, they would like to see further diversification of the economy, with a continued focus on manufacturing as well as growth in digital media and business and professional services, Saeed said.
“The thing about retail and restaurants and health care and public sector jobs — at some level, they have a ceiling for the economy,” he said. “You can only create so many municipal taxes out of those things.”
The “only way out” is more commercial and industrial growth, he said.
“We have people who are assuming there isn’t a job for them. They’ve given up looking. We need to reach out to them and find them.” GLEN NORTON
Director, Economic Development Hamilton “Everybody needs to embrace continuous learning ... and be open to that kind of experience.” JUDY TRAVIS
Workforce Planning Hamilton Hamilton, which the Conference Board of Canada has said has the country’s most diversified economy for four years running, has witnessed “substantial” growth in health and social services, construction, manufacturing and retail trade.