Bigger workforce may halt job losses

As he often is in such situations, Doug Elliott was the voice of wisdom recently on Saskatchewan’s slumping January job numbers.

“If we’ve got another decline in February, then I think we can talk about this being a slowdown, but it’s too soon to tell,” the statistician and publisher of Sask Trends Monitor told a reporter about the 1,200 jobs lost in January.

Elliott’s view makes sense.

After all, it’s been nine years since Saskatchewan has had more than two consecutive months in which there were declines in the number of people working, year-over-year. (The last time was a seven-month stretch from September 2005 to March 2006.)

Those familiar with our history of a declining population and workforce as working-age people fled to Alberta for jobs might be rather amazed at Saskatchewan’s success in the past decade.

However, a few things about the January job numbers are a little disconcerting.

For starters, while Associate Economy Minister Jeremy Harrison was quick to blame it all on falling oil prices, Elliott noted that’s not where we are seeing the drop.

He noted oil-related areas — professional technical services like law, engineering, accounting and restaurants and accommodations — were all doing rather well. It’s also noteworthy that Alberta — whose economy is supposedly more dependent on oil than Saskatchewan — saw 14,000 more jobs in January.

So, if oil isn’t the problem now, what happens if and when Saskatchewan does start to feel the impact of oil? And given the falling Canadian dollar, why did we lose jobs in trade and manufacturing last month?

The history of our resource/agriculture-based economy suggests bad times are never far away.

But is it as worrisome for Saskatchewan as it used to be? Well, maybe not, and that is because of our rapidly changing demographics.

According to a Statistics Canada report that examined the country’s 34 biggest metropolitan areas, 70.8 per cent of Saskatoon’s population was in the working-age category of between 15 to 64 years. That was well above the national average of 68.2 per cent and third highest in the nation, behind Calgary and Edmonton. Meanwhile, Regina, at 69.7 per cent of the population between 15 to 64, was also higher than the national average — seventh highest in Canada, with St. John’s, Halifax and Ottawa-Gatineau also ahead of the Queen City.

For those familiar with Saskatchewan’s past economic dilemma of being a demographic doughnut — lots of seniors, lots of children, but far too few working-age people between 15 and 65 years because of workers moving to Alberta — this is great news.

Of course, this situation isn’t quite as rosy outside the two major cities, where the more numerous seniors in rural areas significantly dragged down the provincial average to 66.6 per cent of the overall population between 15 and 64 years in 2014.

A closer look at Stats Can’s regional breakdown for the province demonstrates the problem: In the Swift Current-Moose Jaw region, only 63.7 per cent are between 15 to 64 years. In Yorkton-Melville only 61.1 per cent are between 15 and 64 years.

That said, the overall Saskatchewan numbers are much better than a decade ago, when only 65.3 per cent were aged 15 to 64.

Saskatchewan has gone from having the highest percentage of seniors in Canada to the seventh highest. We all now know Saskatchewan had its biggest population growth spurt in 90 years — 128,098 more people — between 2004 and 2014.

What most don’t know is we grew where it most matters, economically speaking. Of the newcomers, 98,272 or 76.7 per cent of them were of working age. And they are working. Unemployment is now 3.8 per cent, compared with 5.3 per cent 10 years ago.

A larger mass of working-age people — especially in a province that has, until now, complained about worker shortages — means we may not see the prolonged shedding of jobs that we saw in the 1980s and ’90s.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that working-age people won’t just start to leave again — especially if the Alberta economy continues to out-perform the Saskatchewan economy for a prolonged time.

However, with more working-age people putting down roots here, they may not be so eager to accept that the grass is greener in Alberta.

Having experienced good economic times in Saskatchewan, they may be more willing to ride out any lull.

Or so we can hope, if last month’s job numbers are anything other than a onemonth blip.