Municipal public finances are always of interest to the
average city resident given that municipalities are the level of government
closest to the public providing important and much needed services. At the same time, municipal ratepayers are
sensitive to the taxation of their property and are always interested in
indicators that shed light on efficient provision of municipal services. In northern Ontario, the concerns are amplified
by generally weaker property tax bases and a greater reliance on both
residential taxation as well as borrowing
in order to get things done.
One important indicator is municipal employment given that
wages and salaries often account for two thirds or more of city budgets. In the case of Ontario, data is readily
available from the Financial
Information Returns of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Figure 1 plots total municipal employment
(FT, PT and Seasonal) for northern Ontario’s five major urban centers as
reported in the FIR reports from 2001 to 2023 (only 2022 for Thunder Bay as at
the time of putting this blog post together, it appears the report has not been
filed yet).
All municipalities except for North Bay have seen employment
trend upwards but with some substantial differences. Thunder Bay saw the largest increase at 44.7
percent followed by Greater Sudbury at 18.2 percent, Timmins at 15.8 percent,
the Sault at 14.1 percent and finally North Bay at only 0.4 percent. As well, of these five cities, Thunder Bay
has the largest municipal workforce clocking in at 3,404 in 2022 compared to
(2023 numbers) 2,647 for Greater Sudbury, 1501 for The Sault, 827 for North Bay
and 957 for Timmins.
Of course, the total numbers can be misleading given that
these cities vary in population size, so Figure 2 calculates the total number
of municipal employees per 10,000 population and again plots them for the 2001
to 2023 period. Here the numbers
partially parallel Figure 1 given that Thunder Bay even after adjusting for
population has usually had the most municipal employees per 10,000
population. At the end of the
time-period, Thunder Bay had 313 municipal employees for every
10,000-population compared to 158 for Greater Sudbury, 191 for the Sault, 157
for North Bay and 233 for Timmins. Finally,
Figure 3 plots the percent growth in municipal employees per 10,000 population
since 2001. Here, Thunder Bay again tops
the list at 49.4 percent growth followed by Timmins at 24.7 percent, Sudbury at
24.0 percent, the Sault at 13.4 percent and North Bay at 2.6 percent.
So, the numbers pretty much speak for themselves. Of course, one might argue that some cities
have much larger numbers of municipal employees than others because they
provide more services or have chosen to structure the delivery of
services in a manner that best meets the needs of their ratepayers and that requires more staff. On the other hand, municipal politicians at
budget time often lament that their hands are tied by provincial legislation
that pretty much mandates everything that they do and as a result all they can
do is pass the costs down to ratepayers.
The question that arises in that case is why such widely varying numbers
of employees if everyone is providing similar services because of provincial
mandates? Of course, the answer is
probably more complicated than this simple analysis allows for but one wonders
what it is.
