It's The Economy, Stupid

Reading a letter to the editor in the TJ reminded me of that old adage that where you end up has a lot to do with where you start. Two or three years ago, most people didn’t even know that…

I whipped up this presentation last night.  It contains a few stats and comments about immigration and New Brunswick. Download a PDF version here.

I tend to get quite a few emails whenever I talk about the urban-rural thing  in Atlantic Canada as I did in my Economy Lab piece yesterday. One economist wanted to point out Statistics Canada’s definition of urban and rural.…

I ran into someone at a supermarket recently and he said “You study this stuff. How can this place be so busy at 11 am on a Friday morning?  How come people aren’t at work?” It’s actually pretty simple. Depending…

One of my all time favourite albums was Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”.  I listened to it non-stop one summer every day as I worked flipping burgers in Alberta as a newly minted MBA. Workin’ on the Highway was a…

I had a long, winding conversation this week with someone on the topic of why some local firms seem hostile to economic development efforts.  From Salesforce.com to Molson Breweries to UPS and dozens more – when there are efforts to…

When Radian6 was acquired last year, a number of folks in government and in economic development fretted that Salesforce.com would end up shutting the NB operations down and moving what was left to its head office in the United States.…

In the innovation for economic development course I completed a couple of weeks ago, one of the professors said that Cabinets with a large concentration of engineers tend to do a better job of developing innovation agendas.  He cited Singapore…

I like the BC Jobs Plan because it recognizes the importance of ‘jobs’ first and foremost and also it gets specific about where those jobs are likely to be created.  I have said for a while that we need to…

The month over month labour force survey is helpful in showing recent trends in the employment situation but a slightly longer term view is a more accurate representation of how things are changing. The following charts show the change in…