Northern Economist 2.0
Sunday 18 December 2016
Recognition for Economic Blogging
Some news worth sharing. As you know, I have been involved for a number of years now as a contributor to the economics blog Worthwhile Canadian Initiative along with my colleagues Stephen Gordon, Nick Rowe and Frances Woolley. I have always considered our mix of macro, finance, health, social policy and economic policy posts to be Canada's premier economics blog. However, we also make a mark internationally. Recently, Feedspot has announced that Worthwhile Canadian Initiative is one of its top 100 Economics Blogs! We have also made the list of top 100 Economics Blogs for 2016 done by Intelligent Economist. Moreover, global consulting firm Focus Economics has informed us that recognition is coming our way with their list of top economics blogs coming out in January 2017. Congratulations to my colleagues on WCI and looking forward to another year of great posts in 2017.
Friday 16 December 2016
Northern Ontario Employment Growth Lagging...And With Regional Differences
A new Fraser Institute report on recent economic and employment growth in Ontario noted
that it has been disproportionately concentrated in the Golden Horseshoe and Ottawa regions. Meanwhile, southwestern, eastern and northern Ontario have lagged when it comes to employment growth. Indeed, as the accompanying figure from the report below shows: “Average annual net employment growth has been negative in Eastern and Northern Ontario between 2010 and 2015. Average employment growth in Southwestern Ontario during this time has been positive, but only barely (0.4% annually)”.
What is
surprising is how relatively little attention the report received in northern
Ontario from media outlets and local community economic and business leaders
given the usual preoccupation with the northern Ontario economy. The results of the report are more important
than one might expect because the negative aggregate employment performance of
northern Ontario is being driven largely by northwestern Ontario. The two largest urban economies in northern
Ontario are representative of this differential performance.
Figure 2
presents monthly seasonally adjusted employment for Thunder Bay (with fitted linear
trend) for the period 2001 to 2016 while Figure 3 does the same for Greater
Sudbury (Data source: Statistics Canada). Over the long term, the two
cities have travelled different roads with employment growing in Greater
Sudbury while it has shrunk over time in Thunder Bay. While employment growth
has slowed in Sudbury since 2010 while the decline appears to have flattened out in Thunder Bay, the long-term performance relative to Thunder
Bay still stands out. The long-term effects of the forest sector crisis in Thunder Bay appear to have been a permanent downsizing of the employment base.
Of course, one might want to counter with the argument that unemployment rates in Thunder Bay and indeed the northwest are quite low but this is misleading. The fact is that the labour force has been shrinking along with employment over the last decade in Thunder Bay hence improving the unemployment rate. A shrinking employment base is not generally a cause for celebration even if it comes with falling unemployment rates. More on this in posts to come.
Thursday 15 December 2016
The Northern Economy: More Evidence Based Work Needed
Well, it is probably time to resume the occasional post on aspects of northern Ontario's economy as well as broader economic issues from a northern Ontario perspective. I will do it here on Northern Economist 2.0 to provide continuity with previous posts and material. The advent of the Northern Policy Institute has provided a welcome supply of reports on northern Ontario issues and policy from a broad perspective but there is room I think for material focusing specifically on northern Ontario economic indicators. This particularly struck me with the recent publication by the Fraser Institute of an excellent report on differential economic performance across Ontario. Needless to say, it appears that the economic situation in northern Ontario has not improved substantially in recent years and indeed the recent mining sector downturn appears to have dealt a blow to the region. In the months to come, I will once again start providing the occasional post dealing with northern Ontario's economy using available data resources. Blogging is of course time intensive so I do not plan to resume with the frequency of Northern Economist 1.0 but I will be addressing areas where I think an analytical gap exists. To the future. Cheers. Livio.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)