Ontario Employment Growth Showing Regional Weakness

The July 2019 Labour Force Survey was released by Statistics Canada yesterday and showed total national employment in July was down slightly (by -0.1%) while the unemployment rate moved upwards to 5.7 percent.  What was also interesting was the year over year change in employment as it showed the last twelve months have seen substantial employment growth even if recent growth has slowed a bit.  Seasonally unadjusted employment growth results showed an increase between July 2018 and July 2019 of 2.2% for Canada and 2.3 percent for Ontario.  However, as the accompanying figure shows, when the rates are examined by economic region and ranked there is quite a difference in performance across the province.



The highest growth was for Kingston-Pembroke at 8.9% followed by the Ottawa at 4.2%.  It would appear that eastern Ontario as a whole is doing quite well.  The Kingston area is apparently seeing substantial residential and non-residential construction activity - including hospital and bridge construction - as well as an increase in food manufacturing.  Next was Toronto at 3.4% and then nearby Kitcher-Waterloo-Barrie also at 3.4%.  Lagging behind but still positive are Stratford-Bruce at 0.8% and Hamilton-Niagara at 0.6%.  Thus, eastern and central Ontario edging into the Niagara peninsula have seen employment growth.  The remainder - mainly Southwestern and Northern Ontario have not done well - seeing employment declines.  The largest decline was London at -4.5% followed by Northeast Ontario at -2.6% , Muskoka-Kawarthas at -1.8%, the Northwest at -1.7% and then Windsor-Sarnia at -0.2%. 

With respect to Northern Ontario, employment in the Northeast declined from 257,400 to 250,800 between July 2018 and 2019 while the unemployment rate rose from 6% to 6.8%.  In the Northwest, employment fell from 107,800 to 106,000 while the unemployment rate rose from 4.9% to 5.6%.  If there is an economic slowdown or recession in the offing, it would appear that it may already be underway in parts of Ontario.