Victoria: Most Improved Labour Market

By Melanie Joy Douglas, Monster.ca

Victoria has shown the biggest improvement in its unemployment rate over the last seven years, says a new report by Statistics Canada.

According to Statscan, Canada's 28 metropolitan areas have accounted for nearly three-quarters of the growth in employment in the country during the past seven years.

Between 2000 and 2006, employment nationally rose by just over 1.7 million. Of this total, census metropolitan areas accounted for an estimated 1.3 million, or about 73%. Employment in these large metropolitan areas increased 12.6%, compared with growth of only 9.6% in the smaller urban and rural areas in the rest of the nation, the report said.

Best Performers

Nearly all the best performers have been on the Prairies, especially in Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia. Two standout CMAs include:

• Victoria: In 2000, Victoria had an unemployment rate of 6.7%, and was in 22nd place among the 38 CMAs and provincial non-CMA areas. By 2006, its rate had dropped to 3.7% and it had risen to third place.
  
  
• Calgary: Calgary had an annual average unemployment rate of just 3.2% last year, the lowest rate among Canadian cities and half the national average of 6.3% last year.

Weakest Performers

“Labour markets in Ontario fared the worst in terms of changes in rankings,” the report said. Of the 16 areas in which rankings fell over this period, nine were in Ontario.

Moreover, the unemployment rate rose in 8 of 28 metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2006. Not surprisingly, Ontario accounted for seven of these eight metro areas: Oshawa, Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catharines–Niagara, London, Windsor and Thunder Bay. The eighth was the CMA of Montreal.

• Windsor: Windsor has been hit especially hard by setbacks in manufacturing, especially in the auto industry. In 2000, Windsor's average annual unemployment rate was 5.4%, and by last year, it had climbed to 9%, well above the national average.
  
  
• Montreal: The unemployment rate rose from 7.8% in 2000 to 8.4% last year. Particularly hard-hit were its aerospace industry as well as the clothing and textile industry.

Among non-metropolitan areas, Newfoundland and Labrador still toiled away as the average unemployment rate barely changed from 21.3% in 2000 to last year’s 19.3%.

Data for this study came from the monthly Labour Force Survey, which samples about 54,000 households.