The latest employment numbers are out and the NB economy added 2,000 people to the employed ranks in October. But what is interesting is that 6,000 people entered the workforce. Looking at previous months this doesn’t seem to be any kind of a trend but it is interesting that the month the province started the stay in NB to work campaign 6,000 people entered the workforce but only 2,000 found jobs.
Like I said you can’t do any serious analysis based on one month but if the labour force keeps growing well above the read of employment growth you get the high unemployment numbers. NB is now sporting an 8.8% seasonally adjusted unemployment rate which is third highest behind PEI and NL.
There was a big drop in NB’s non-residential construction building permit value in September.
I thought this was interesting. NB’s GDP growth underperformed the national average for five of the last seven years.
Collective corporation pre tax profits are up 73% over the seven year period compared to 60% nationally.
Personal disposable income is up 25% in New Brunswick during the seven years well below the national growth rate of 34%.
Disposable income is total income less taxes so it would stand to reason that overall tax collection in New Brunswick would be declining slower than the national average and this is correct (24% versus 30% growth over the 7 years).
It is interesting to look at this stuff when Stats Can provides a seven year trend.