Okay. Canada had the best month for employment growth in over four years. There were almost 97,000 new jobs created last month according to Statistics Canada. New Brunswick’s total employment went up zero. No new jobs created in New Brunswick. We are up 5,000 over last year (big chunk of public jobs and retail jobs) but even that is the third worst year over year job growth among the provinces in Canada.
Wonder how this will be spun in the Times & Transcript tomorrow? What you wanna bet it will look something like this?
“The news is very good,” Carr said. “The unemployment rate was 8.6 per cent last month, which is the lowest for at least 30 years. That’s a rate that I certainly haven’t seen in the province, and it is truly encouraging. There is also a continuing strong labour force and employment growth, with 360,100 people working in the province – once again, a record. This is a level which has been maintained for two months in a row.”
Translation:
We still have the third highest unemployment rate in Canada (same as in 1999). Our employment growth is either second or third worst in Canada since 1999 and in the month where Canada had the best job growth in four years, no new jobs were created in New Brunswick.
And for the Minister “the news is very good”.
Rome is burning and “the news is very good”.
First sustained population decline since Confederation and “the news is very good”.
14 straight years of net out-migration and “the news is very good”.
An Alberta MP suggests in a Commons committee that the Federal Government should force people in rural Atlantic Canada to go work in Fort McMurray or not get their EI and “the news is very good”.
Question for Mr. Carr: What, exactly, would be bad news?
Things for me are getting hazy in my old age. Was their ever a time in this province when a Cabinet Minister, Premier or anyone political actually told people the truth?
Jody Carr would be, in my humble opinion, much much much more credible if he said: “Look it. Two more mills are closing. The high Canadian dollar has beaten up on our non-refined oil exports. Our population is declining. We’ve gotta get moving folks and our government has a plan.”
Folks, this is serious. There hasn’t been a major new business investment project in New Brunswick in months. The last new serious jobs announcement was last September – that’s almost a year ago. Check it out. They have announced a couple of small, local firm expansions worth less than 100 jobs and two of those rural virtual call centres. And that’s it. They reannounced SNC’s call centre and Molson’s plant that were already announced last year.
There was a time, not that long ago, where there were 4-5 good job announcements per month in this province. Now there’s one or two a year – if we’re lucky.
That will catch up to us, folks.