28 January 2009

Jobs malaise starts to spread

The following article is excerpted from the 27 January 2009 edition of “globeandmail.com”.

…. Until a few months ago, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia were outperforming the rest of the country in job growth and economic performance.

But now, as B.C. and Alberta slow dramatically, thousands of resource and construction workers are being thrown on to unemployment lines crowded with refugees from the rapidly shrinking manufacturing base of Central Canada.

Figures released by Statistics Canada yesterday showed that more than half a million Canadians received regular employment insurance (EI) benefits in November, up 3.1 per cent from the preceding month and 11.7 per cent from a year earlier. The number of regular EI beneficiaries jumped in all provinces and territories, according to the Statscan report. The biggest percentage hikes came in Ontario, British Columbia, Nunavut, Yukon and Alberta.

The worst is yet to come. Companies are only starting to cut back in response to the deteriorating economy, economists say, and the job market collapse could be even more pronounced out west, where employment was the strongest….

The national jobless rate, which was at a 33-year low of 5.9 per cent just last February, reached 6.6 per cent in December, the highest level in almost three years. But the rate is inevitably heading toward 8 per cent or slightly higher this year, regardless of government efforts to breathe life back into the fading economy, according to past history and economists' forecasts.

Even once-steady jobs in financial services, tourism and other areas are falling by the wayside, as the economic clouds darken.

Yesterday's federal budget sought to address the job issue with higher retraining grants and other measures, including an extension of the amount of time that a person can collect employment insurance to 50 weeks from 45. That's expected to reduce substantially the number of jobless who exhaust their claims….

Other measures, such as government infrastructure spending, will help cushion the blow to the crumbling construction sector, but not in time to prevent widespread cutbacks this year, analysts say….

That translates into the loss of about another quarter of a million jobs and possibly more, as labour conditions rarely improve until a recovery is well under way….