Cornwall ON – An interesting mix of data came across my desk today regarding unemployment in Ontario and Cornwall. There’s some good and some bad news, but ultimately we’re doing great considering the world economy and especially that of our neighbors to the south!
First off our regular Economist Roger Sauvé checked in with his latest report for the year 2010.
ROGER SAUVÉ – Life Trends – Facts And Figures That Matter to You – Cornwall job market slips in 2010
And how did Cornwall do on the employment front in 2010? It seems that Cornwall lost a bit of ground last year. These job market numbers include both Cornwall and South Stormont.
The recession continues to have a negative impact on Cornwall and South Stormont.
According to estimates just released by Statistics Canada, there were 28,600 people with jobs in Cornwall in 2010. This was down by 300 jobs from 2009 and down 2,100 jobs from the peak in 2007. Annual data is available for the 1987 to 2010 period. The highest level of employment over the 23-year period was 30,700 attained in both 1989 and 2007. The weakest year was in 1999 when employment fell to 23,700.
The unemployment rate rose to 8.9% in 2010 compared to 8.3% in 2009. The rate has now risen each year since 2007 when it stood at only 5.8%. About 2,800 people were unemployed in 2010, up 200 from 2009 and up 900 from 2007.
The unemployment rate for all of Canada averaged 8% in 2010 down from 8.3% in 2009.
Each month, Statistics Canada surveys a sample of Cornwall householders. If you say that you have a job, then you are classified as being employed. If you say that you are “actively” looking for a job but have not found one, then you are classified as being unemployed.
Typically, someone agrees to be part of the Statistics Canada sample for six months and is then replaced by someone else for another six months. For an entire year, about 3,600 individual surveys are filled out or answered over the phone.
As an aside, it should be noted that these annual numbers are benchmarked against Census numbers to provide a more reliable estimate. The cancellation of the long-census form will make it much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, to produce these annual numbers at the local level in the future.
Roger Sauvé is President of People Patterns Consulting (www.peoplepatternsconsulting.com). Roger is an economist and demographer and lives in Summerstown.
But what the numbers don’t show is the recent trending here in Ontario that shows that things are getting better across the Province,
and we have this quote from Minister Dwight Duncan.
It is coming down slowly. I am delighted to see 22,000 new jobs in Ontario. Ontario is leading Canada, that’s twice in a row. We had a good year last year. We are about where we were at the beginning of the downturn. I think our tax plan is going to work. We now have the most competitive taxes in North America. It would be a terrible mistake as the opposition is suggesting raising taxes on the automotive industry at this time. The recovery is still fragile but the numbers are all turning in the right direction.
And this just arrived from Statscan.
“In Ontario, employment increased for the second consecutive month, up 23,000 in December. The unemployment rate edged down 0.1 percentage points to 8.1%. With December’s increase, the number of workers in Ontario grew by 2.8% (+186,000) from a year earlier, above the national growth rate of 2.2%. Over the 12 months of 2009, Ontario’s employment was down 1.8%, the largest decline among all provinces.”
So as of today the glass is a little bit more full than empty. Hopefully we can help spur growth here in Eastern Ontario as well as across the province.
