For those who like data, here is a look at how exports from New Brunswick are holding up. Overall, in the most recent six months, total exports are down 11% – not bad comparatively. Obviously, the refined oil skews the data. Without oil, exports are actually up 1%. You can see what is driving much of the growth. Seafood is up – so is aquaculture. Saved by Fish. It’s nice to see frozen food manufacturing up as well.
Exports From New Brunswick
September 2007 to February 2008 compared to September 2008 to February 2009
| Sep07/Feb 08 | Sep08/Feb 09 | % Change | |
| 32411 – Petroleum Refineries | 3,542,260,848 | 2,924,719,091 | -17% |
| 32212 – Paper Mills | 237,969,187 | 253,725,517 | 7% |
| 31171 – Seafood Product Preparation and Packaging | 206,567,499 | 253,671,612 | 23% |
| 32211 – Pulp Mills | 248,105,954 | 249,561,578 | 1% |
| 21239 – Other Non-Metallic Mineral Mining and Quarrying | 142,048,429 | 169,187,019 | 19% |
| 32111 – Sawmills and Wood Preservation | 107,158,612 | 99,296,970 | -7% |
| 21223 – Copper, Nickel, Lead and Zinc Ore Mining | 123,045,579 | 84,951,453 | -31% |
| 31141 – Frozen Food Manufacturing | 76,404,315 | 84,014,649 | 10% |
| 33149 – Non-Ferrous Metal Rolling, Drawing, Extruding and Alloying | 102,513,899 | 61,447,948 | -40% |
| 11251 – Animal Aquaculture | 46,291,643 | 55,581,111 | 20% |
| 22111 – Electric Power Generation | 57,435,822 | 49,260,888 | -14% |
| 11121 – Vegetable and Melon Farming | 28,595,221 | 44,030,674 | 54% |
| 11411 – Fishing | 41,184,515 | 30,875,869 | -25% |
| 32213 – Paperboard Mills | 41,620,029 | 28,728,256 | -31% |
| 31212 – Breweries | 26,936,959 | 28,210,412 | 5% |
| 32121 – Veneer, Plywood and Engineered Wood Product Manufacturing | 38,277,392 | 27,750,795 | -28% |
| 33999 – All Other Miscellaneous Manufacturing | 29,821,059 | 26,869,677 | -10% |
| 33232 – Ornamental and Architectural Metal Products Manufacturing | 12,400,409 | 23,487,356 | 89% |
| 32518 – Other Basic Inorganic Chemical Manufacturing | 15,464,392 | 23,260,125 | 50% |
| 21111 – Oil and Gas Extraction | 18,376,720 | 23,235,112 | 26% |
| 32221 – Paperboard Container Manufacturing | 18,699,955 | 19,470,117 | 4% |
| 32229 – Other Converted Paper Product Manufacturing | 14,672,403 | 18,927,573 | 29% |
| 32512 – Industrial Gas Manufacturing | 16,328,207 | 16,848,912 | 3% |
| 33699 – Other Transportation Equipment Manufacturing | 9,953,216 | 14,555,011 | 46% |
| 32619 – Other Plastic Product Manufacturing | 13,672,439 | 13,576,669 | -1% |
| SUB-TOTAL | 5,215,804,703 | 4,625,244,394 | -11% |
| OTHERS | 318,811,233 | 316,559,766 | -1% |
| TOTAL (ALL INDUSTRIES) | 5,534,615,936 | 4,941,804,160 | -11% |
Great to see this data and as you suggest, not as devastating as one might expect.
Are you familiar with any employment ratios or factors that could be applied to such data. For example, aquaculture would have a high labour intensity factor with the associated support versus say mineral export. I think export data is an excellent indicator of economic efforts but there are certain sectors that would have high employment implications and therefore would be even more meaningful to ED.
I have seen some loose employment ratio data (i.e. Oil & gas refining employs x per $1million in exports while furniture manufacturing employs y per $1million). I don’t have the data at my finger tips but I have said here that we need to understand this dynamic when mapping out economic development strategies.
Can you tell us where you got those statistics and how much the Province of New Brunswick imports?
I got the statistics here:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/tdo-dcd.nsf/eng/home
And you can also run the export numbers as well. NB did $12.8B in exports last year and had $10.9B in imports. So we have a positive trade balance. However, if out take out oil the picture changes somewhat. New Brunswick imported $7.6B of oil for processing and exported $8.5B of refined oil products.