Employment in Hamilton drops for third month in a row

Hamilton has lost 13,000 jobs over the past year.

The most recent Labour Force Survey numbers from Statistics Canada show the number of people working in the Hamilton area plunged from 392,200 in July 2015 to 378,300 last month.

That sharp decline pushed the local unemployment rate up to 6.1 per cent from 5.4 per cent for the same month last year.

In human terms, that means the number of people counted as officially unemployed in the HamiltonBurlington-Grimsby area is up by more than 11 per cent to 24,800 from 22,300.

The July numbers mark the third straight monthly decline in local employment.

McMaster University business professor Marvin Ryder warned the numbers should be read with caution.

“This isn’t a deep pit we have fallen into, but it is a slow slide into something. I don’t want to sound any alarm bells, but the economy really has slowed down here.”

That slowdown, Ryder said, is being driven by several forces: changes in exchange rates that affect the price of Canadian exports, consumer demand in the United States and Canada and even uncertainty about the American presidential election.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath used the numbers as a base to attack the economic record of the Liberal government, saying Premier Kathleen Wynne has failed to emphasize job creation efforts.

“Instead of focusing on good jobs by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and investing in health care, education and job training, especially for youth, people here in Hamilton continue to see more Liberal cuts, fewer services and higher costs for everyday necessities like hydro and car insurance,” she said in a statement.

Horwath added in an interview that the jobs numbers were “quite shocking” and point to an urgent need for government action to kickstart the economy.

“In Hamilton 13,000 families are being impacted by the fact this government doesn’t have a plan to get people back to work,” she said.

Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid told a Friday morning news conference on the jobless numbers that “overall trends” in the province are strong despite the slide in employment.

“Obviously, we would have rather seen an increase in jobs in July, but the overall trends in Ontario continue to remain very, very positive,” Duguid told the CBC. “July was the 15th month in a row that we’ve seen Ontario’s unemployment lower than the national average.”

The national unemployment rate for July crept up to 6.9 per cent from 6.8.

Viktor Cicman, projects and data analyst co-ordinator for Workforce Planning Hamilton, said the new figures may be the expression of trends that have been building for several years, including a wave of older workers finally retiring after staying in jobs longer than expected.

“The trend is clearly that the number of people employed here has slowly been declining despite people coming into the population,” he said. “People have been saying that for years, but now it is starting to happen.”

Offsetting some of the gloom of the figures is a report prepared by Workforce Planning Hamilton that found second-quarter online vacancy notices in Hamilton rose 10 per from the first quarter.

The survey conducted for the agency found 6,015 vacant jobs in the Hamilton area. Of those the largest chunk, 1,271, was in the sales and service sectors. Of the total, 1,432 positions required a university degree and 1,192 required community college. A further 1,447 jobs required at least high school.

Of the total, 2,039 of the jobs offered were full time and 877 were part time.

A top 10 list of local employers based on number of openings posted included four retailers — Shoppers Drug Mart, Walmart, McDonald’s and Tim Hortons — while the City of Hamilton remains the top seeker of employees.