NDP job complaints off base
Quick! If you are the Opposition party in Saskatchewan that’s desperate to establish credibility after your most devastating election defeat, what’s the one issue that you’d pick?
If you responded it is the horror of trying to find a job in this province, congratulations. You qualify to become an NDP strategist. And given that last month’s 1,700-person increase in unemployment translates into one additional person unemployed in Saskatchewan for every seven who found work, expect to stay in your Opposition job for a while. Granted, there are strange things happening on the Saskatchewan jobs front, albeit not of the negative kind that provides great fodder for political opponents. Statistics Canada numbers released Friday indicated a record 548,900 Saskatchewan people working in June — about 11,700 more than a year ago.
Consider how mindboggling are these numbers, given this province’s historically stagnant job growth — 494,300 working people in June 2002 and 460,00 working in 1992. Consider how good our latest numbers are in comparison to the rest of in Canada, where the nationwide job growth was a puny 7,300.
In fact, about the only thing more confounding than the NDP’s focus on a comparatively inconsequential bump in Saskatchewan’s number of unemployed is why its employment numbers remain as good as they are.
“Basically, I’m as confused as you are,” offered Doug Elliott of SaskTrends Monitor, the province’s foremost statistician. The usual indicators that signify a provincial economic/jobs slowdown are present — declining potash sales, a drop in canola and grain prices, and significantly, the dip in oil prices to below $80 a barrel. “These are the right things to look at,” Elliott said. “It may be a question of timing.”
The job numbers often don’t reflect the immediate economic reality, both good or bad, because of the lag time in laying off and hiring people, he explained. In other words, we may still be riding last year’s good resource numbers.
The current resources slowdown that’s already hitting this year’s provincial budget may not hit the job market until next year. For now, though, we’re doing better than ever on the jobs front. For example, Elliott said, Saskatchewan’s construction industry continues to boom with a growth of 7.6 per cent, or 3,200 more jobs year over year. The service and retail sectors, too, are doing exceptional well.
However, it is who is doing well in the employment front that may be most significant. First Nations employment in the first six months of this year has increased 9.1 per cent, while immigrant employment (those who’ve been living in Canada for five years or fewer) has increased a whopping 29 per cent in that period. This causes one to shake one’s head that Premier Brad Wall would blow up a very successful immigrant nominee program just because federal minister Jason Kenney didn’t like it.
Interestingly, employment among those born in Canada is actually down two per cent, suggesting a workforce shifting away from the retiring white, middle class.
If there is a dark cloud in the numbers, it’s that the job growth appears to be confined to Regina, Saskatoon and the southeast oil and potash industries, Elliott noted. Other areas — such as Swift Current/Moose Jaw (down 3.5 per cent), Prince Albert/North (down 1.6 per cent) and Kindersley/Rose- town/Biggar (down 4.4 per cent) — are beginning to see job losses.
He also noted that Alberta’s job growth is even more rapid than Saskatchewan’s, with Edmonton alone recording a year-overyear growth of 26,000 jobs. This is mildly worrisome because — despite the NDP’s new-found worries about Saskatchewan’s second-lowest-in-the nation jobless rate of 4.9 per cent unemployment rate — our unemployed workers tend to move to Alberta.
To be fair, the NDP caucus likely was just glomming on to whatever “bad news” it could find in the labour stats on a slow summer day. Less forgivable, however, is the analysis and “solutions” advocated from the NDP and labour ranks that make no sense at all in the Saskatchewan context.
Economist Erin Weir, a likely leadership contender for the NDP, says the problem is Saskatchewan’s faltering construction sector. Huh? And other advocates on the left are calling for guaranteed annual incomes at a time when Saskatchewan’s average wages are among the highest in Canada.
Such nonsense actually is harder to understand than why Saskatchewan’s job market is doing as well as it is.