How Many Jobs Have Been Created in Thunder Bay?

One of Thunder Bay's Members of Parliament and currently Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour - Patty Hajdu - asserted in a letter to the Chronicle-Journal this morning that "In the last eight months alone, the Canadian economy has created more than a quarter-million full-time jobs. In fact, 1,600 jobs new jobs have been created here in Thunder Bay since we were elected."  Needless to say, this piqued my curiosity and so I went off to Statistics Canada to see what Thunder Bay's total employment numbers have looked like since October of 2015 - the year the Trudeau Liberals  took office.

The results are provided in Figure 1, and are monthly seasonally un-adjusted total employment (three month moving average) for the Thunder Bay CMA.  The numbers show rising monthly employment from October 2015 to August 2016 and a decline since.  In October of 2015, total employment in Thunder Bay was 59,100 jobs and the total employed reached a peak of 61,300 by August of 2016.  This represents an increase of 2,200 jobs.  However, between August of 2016 and March of 2017, employment then declines from 61,300 to 59,300 - a drop of 2,000 jobs.  So, based on these numbers, from October of 2015 to March of 2017 Thunder Bay goes from 59,100 to 59,300 jobs for an increase of 200 jobs.



Of course, while these numbers are three month moving averages, they are not adjusted for seasonality. If we go from October 2015 to October 2016, employment grows from 59,100 to 60,800 for an increase of 1,700 jobs.  If we go from March 2016 to March 2017, we see total employment grow from 59,500 to 59,300 jobs - a decline of 200 jobs.  Based on Figure 1, Thunder Bay may have indeed seen the creation of 1,600 new jobs since the election of the Trudeau Liberal government but it also appears to have lost nearly as many jobs making for little in the addition of net new employment.