Labour market blues

Hopefully these numbers will turn around eventually.  NB shed more employment last month – just a small amount but nevertheless this makes a continuing jobs slide that has lasted since some time last year. 

There were an estimated 361,700 persons working in November (seasonally adjusted).  In November 2007 – three years ago – there were 367,600.  In November 2008, there were 366,000 people working and in November 2009 there were 368,200.  It looks like the impact of the stimulus spending peaked late last year and we are dropping employment ever since.

The unemployment rate topped 10% – it’s now at 10.3% – which is interesting given that just about every employer at the Future NB summit was complaining about a lack of workers around the province.

3 thoughts on “Labour market blues

  1. The numbers are worse than they first appear. That relatively small drop in employment is due to an 1800 increase in part-time positions. Full-time fell 2300 (which I believe is on the edge of being stat. sig.).

  2. In related news, the first target of cuts by the new Alward government was education.

    When you have an unskilled workforce, you can have simultaneously (a) high unemployment, and (b) problems filling positions.

  3. This can be linked to the thread on the FutureNB summit and the complaint from employers about ‘labour shortages’.

    Let’s look at some facts. David Ganong was head of the summit, at his companies website under employment: “Ganong Bros., Limited has opportunities in the area of heavy to light labour, packing, machine and process operating, shipping and receiving as well as administration”

    Now, if your going to tell me that nobody in the NB labour force can do heavy OR light labour, or knows how to administrate, or pack chocolates, or run light machinery, then things are MUCH worse. Other provinces shouldn’t just be sending transfer payments but volunteers to help NBers feed and clothe themselves.

    At the Irving jobsites there are NO professional jobs listed, only security guards and pizza guys. Career Beacon has a few more of a challenge, but few that a community college graduate or university grad couldn’t handle.

    There are some more challenging, mostly in the public sector like psychologists. There’s an ad for an ‘environmental engineer’ and sadly NB has been slow off that mark still focusing on nuclear, meanwhile here in Waterloo there is an entire school dedicated to Environmental Engineering. There are also a few jobs for aviation mechanics. Those may be a bit more specialized, but I certainly wouldn’t think they are THAT specialized.

    There are a fair number of engineering jobs, but since there are two schools putting out engineers, I don’t see what the issue is there.

    In short, I’d REALLY love to see exactly what jobs industry in NB can’t seem to fill.

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