Thunder Bay's Employment Surge

Data from Statistics Canada on Thunder Bay's unemployment rate, employment and labour force suggest that its economy is experiencing a rebound after quite a few years of slow performance.  The most recent unemployment rate in Thunder Bay for May 2012 came in at 5.7 percent, which is well below the national and Ontario unemployment rates.  Of course, one of the reasons our unemployment rate is so low is that the labour force has not been growing as fast as employment but the last twelve months suggest that employment has actually begun to grow faster than the labour force.

Figure 1 shows unemployment rates (seasonally adjusted) for Canada, Ontario, Thunder Bay and Greater Sudbury for the 2009 to 2012 period on the left and total employment (seasonally adjusted)  for Thunder Bay over the same period on the right.  As can be seen, the period from June 2011 to January 2012 saw robust increases in employment followed by a decline since.  Overall, employment levels in Thunder Bay are the highest that they have been in the last three years.

Figure 1

The second figure shows annualized growth rates (May to May) for 2010, 2011 and 2012.  Thunder Bay's labour force actually shrank in both 2010 and 2011 but it grew substantially in 2012 - along with employment.  Employment in 2012 grew by 5.3 percent while the labour force grew by 3.8 percent.  As a result,  the unemployment rate dropped below 7 percent in 2011 and in 2012 has fallen below 6 percent.  However, the total level of employment in May 2012 is 61,500 - which is still down from the high of 67,400 reached in March 2003 but up from a low of 57,400 as recently as June 2011.

Thunder Bay's economy appears to have begun to recover from the forest sector collapse but still has ground to go.  Moreover, its employment still seems to be subject to somewhat erratic fluctuations.  While June 2011 to January 2012 saw a period of sustained increases, employment has declined since then.  Thunder Bay is still very much an economy in transition.

Figure 2