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What happened in Guelph? +12% YOY employment change is huge.

As someone who tends to look just at macro data, it is surprising to see so much variance across cities, especially with no obvious pattern.

Maybe some of it is sampling variance? The Labour Force Survey (which is where these numbers come from?) doesn't have that big a sample size.

Majromax & Nick:
I think some of it it has to be sampling variance especially for smaller centres. Guelph goes from employment of 78600 to 87900 in 12 months. Unless someone knows something about what has been going on in Guelph that I am not aware of.

i would be careful when it comes to mining/extraction. Permenent, local jobs tend to come after years of exploration and mine development (i assume oil works similarly). The early to mid stages of development tend to import experts/construction workers from broader areas- and these are the projects that get shuttered/paused more frequently than those that are already up and running.

I thought Canada's economy was now firmly driven by housing rather than resources. E.g. Residential investment is 30% of Gross fixed capital formation and rent + consumption of goods and services related to dwellings is 20% of personal consumption expenditures. About 30% of Canada's economy is accounted for by real estate versus the 7% or so accounted for by oil and gas.

Also, Statistics Canada sucks.

My understanding of the oil & gas industry, especially in Canada's largely conventional/oilsands deposits, is that capital projects have really long lead times. So I'd assume that you won't see employment #'s change rapidly in the presence of the recent commodity(energy) price collapse. The drop in employment is surely coming though. I work for a midstream energy company and we're giving "concessions" to some of our clients to help them with their cash flow. It's pretty ugly for the E&P crowd.

Thanks for this post, Livio.
I live in the Maritimes where dozens of my friends and neighbours have been waiting for call backs from their
respective employers – all of whom are either directly or indirectly related to oil – since Christmas. Surprisingly few
of them have opted to register for EI, instead either enjoying the break using personal savings, or working
under the table (or shovelling snow - ha!). So I suppose my gut instinct right now is telling me that unemployment numbers have yet
to properly codify the real picture (ie. the real damage) of the decline in oil prices since autumn. Am I
off-base on this? I have to wonder if some industries lag – perhaps based on (what I’ll call) traditions – in
reporting their unemployment status. Anecdotally, right or wrong, most seasonal workers here in the Maritimes are very punctual
in their reporting status, whereas it appears that oil workers aren’t as much. Does this impact the statistics?
Cheers. Matt

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