Youth unemployment is back in the news after new data suggesting we still have a high unemployment rate among the young. The government just announced a whack of money to alleviate the pain of high youth unemployment. While high unemployment…
Continue ReadingShediac: New Brunswick’s most cosmopolitan municipality?
As you know I have been crunching a lot of Census data recently and have stumbled on some quirky stats. The latest relates to the megalopolis of Shediac. The Census provides information on population mobility – specifically asking where people…
Continue ReadingDr. Strangebedfellows or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Amazon
Over the Christmas season I had a craving for Cherries Jubilee, a decadent dessert featuring a warm Bing cherry sauce served over vanilla ice cream. I went online, downloaded the ingredient list and went to the grocery store. One ingredient,…
Continue ReadingMen Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: Workforce edition
One of my problems is distraction. I’ll be crunching data for a report or presentation and stumble on a tangential piece of data that is interesting. For example, the new annual Labour Force Survey data for 2017 recently came out…
Continue ReadingThe exogenous shock theory of economic development
In the early 1990s when I first started thinking about economic development I had a chat with a Quebec consultant who was helping the provincial government there develop economic growth strategies. He was convinced the only way to grow was…
Continue ReadingWhere are the young entrepreneurs?
We have been debating the curious lack of young entrepreneurs in New Brunswick for years. It’s hard to define the term ‘entrepreneur’ but if you look at self-employment as a proxy – New Brunswick has always had well below self-employment…
Continue ReadingTurning the big 5-0
This week I turned 50. Reading those condescending LinkedIn posts about the young HR managers taking a ‘chance’ on the 50+ workers now takes on special meaning. One I read today talked about his great success hiring 50+ workers because they “bring…
Continue ReadingAttracting international R&D: In praise of Siemens
One of the issues we discuss very little in New Brunswick is the role of multinational firms. When we do, many people derisively talk about how we need to ‘take care’ of our own firms and they express skepticism about…
Continue ReadingNB’s R&D sector – no old fogies allowed?
As I have detailed elsewhere New Brunswick is primarily known for having an older workforce when compared to other provinces. Not so with the R&D sector where 44% are under the age of 35 – second only to PEI among…
Continue ReadingNew Brunswick’s youngest and oldest occupations
The Census gives us good information on the age of workers in the province. While it doesn’t provide a median or average age by occupation it does breakdown the number of people working in 500 occupations (and aggregations) by age…
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