EMPLOYMENT STATISTICS SHOW BIG GAINS IN WINDSOR
While the jobs picture is gloomy across Canada, Windsor recorded the lowest unemployment rate anywhere in Ontario — a stark contrast to a few years ago when this city’s jobless numbers routinely led the nation.
Windsor’s recorded a 4.6 per cent unemployment rate for January — a substantial decline from six per cent in both December and November, according to Statistics Canada’s numbers released on Friday. The provincial average is 5.5 per cent. Canada’s average unemployment rate was 5.9 per cent in January.
But Matt Marchand, president and CEO of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, urged caution about getting overjoyed at the findings. The poverty rate for Windsor area remains among the highest in Canada, our level of post-secondary education remains below the national average and the percentage of people locally participating in the employment sector is at an all-time low, he said.
“People who have given up looking for work are not included in these numbers,” Marchand said. “The unemployment number is a bit of a red herring since you have to look at the entire picture — our economy and what’s happening in the province.
“We have lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and other high-paying jobs and not replaced them. You see that playing out in our poverty rate. Folks are being left behind.”
The cost of doing business in Ontario — due to electricity rates and taxes — also remains an obstacle to corporate investment as jobs continue to be lost locally and provincially to other jurisdictions in the U.S., Marchand said.
Another factor hurting the local employment sector is the shortage of skilled trade workers due to the lack of adequate training or job interest which has left “$500 million of economic opportunity on the table,” he said.
But the 4.6 rate for Windsor on the surface appears good news compared to other numbers released Friday by Statistics Canada which showed 88,000 jobs were lost across the country in January — the largest one-month loss in nine years.
The decrease in jobs was created in part by the loss last month of 137,000 part-time positions — including more than 59,000 in Ontario, where minimum wage increased by $2.40 to $14 per hour.
“Kathleen Wynne was warned by experts that her overnight minimum wage hike would put our most vulnerable people out of work,” said MPP Monte McNaughton, the Ontario PC economic development critic. “Now we see more young people out of a job.”
Frazier Fathers, manager of community impact for the local United Way, said the last month’s jobless number for Windsor may be good news, but whether it’s really reflective of the employment sector locally remains to be seen.
“Statistics Canada’s survey is a relatively small sample,” he said. “Sometimes month to month it may be higher or lower. What you really want to look at is the trend. If the number remains the same next month and the month after, that would be really good sign.”
Poverty does remain high in Windsor and the job participation rate — those in the community actively working or seeking a job — is about five per cent lower in Windsor than the provincial average, Fathers said.