The famous quote from Yogi Berra came to mind when I read Statistics Canada’s labour force survey this morning.
In 2003, in the middle of the election, Statistics Canada released the monthly labour force survey and it showed an 8,000 person drop in employment which was a serious drop by any measure. The Premier at the time shrugged this off by saying “I don’t believe it”.
I was quite put out about this cavilier comment as Statistics Canada is one of the most respected Statistics Agencies in the world.
But the media covered it once and then it was dropped as a non-issue.
It’s déjà vu all over again, my friends.
New Brunswick shed over 5,000 jobs last month. In percentage of the employed workforce, that’s a 1.5% drop in one month – the worst, by far, in all of Canada.
Total Employment % Change
July to August 2006
NL +1.5%
PEI +0.7%
NS -0.1%
NB -1.5%
QC -0.2%
ONT -0.2%
MB +0.4%
SK -0.1%
AB +0.4%
BC -0.1%
You know I don’t like month to month comparisons (even seasonally adjusted ones) but that’s what the Lord government likes to use, so here we go:
The second worst rate of employment growth in the country. Almost half the growth rate of PEI. In addition, using the Stat Can survey, there are about 24,000 more people working today (August 2006) than in August 1999. We also know that about 10k government jobs have been created and about 9k in call centre jobs. So, that leaves about 5k in private sector, non-call centre, job creation over six years. The record levels of inflation-adjusted government spending in New Brunswick alone should have created more jobs than that.
Prediction: Lord’s response “I don’t believe, again”.
Al Hogan? He won’t cover it at all, again or he will just carve off the Moncton numbers, again.