For four months in a row Saskatchewan has seen net year-over-year job losses in a time where oil is in the $60 range and uranium is sky high. Over the past year Saskatchewan's work force has shrunk by nearly 9,000 people or 1.8 per cent. For the record there are only two other provinces that have seen job losses over the same period -- Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.
Meditate on that for a while.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Saskatchewan job numbers in a death spiral
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11 comments:
"What, me worry?": Alfred E. Newman and Lorne Calvert.
Maybe all those old NDP'ers that told me that I should move to AB if i didn't like in in SK were actually doing me a favour. Maybe I should have listened!
We can blame it all on the private sector. The government has done it's work increasing their employee numbers substsntially. CUPE and SGEU are right we should incrrease royalties and corporate taxes and hire more civil servants. These jobs pay better and are more secure than any private sector job.
Scott, are you kidding me, hire more public servants??????? What value does a public sector job create, all they do is spend more tax dollars to justify their jobs. They do not create any new wealth as all private sector jobs do, get your head out of the sand.
I think that Scott was being sarcastic: right Scott? I read his comments and thought that he was joking.
It is true that while the population drops and fewer people are working, this Calvert gov keeps hiring people (NDP voters?): I see a trend, one I don't like.
Population isn't an issue if the GDP is growing, which it is substantially. The current government has lead Sask to have province status for the 1st time ever.
Yet people leave Saskatchewan, why isn't the invisible hand taking care of this, increase productivity, increase investment, means more jobs. Yet the youth keep leaving.
The reason- not NDP government, not crowns, not taxes or wages but Bright Lights, Big City.
The young are attracted to the night life that larger cities offer to them, nothing else.
Chad, GDP is the sum of the value of all the products sold in the province. The fact that the GDP is up has almost nothing with government leadership and everything to do with the invisible hand.
Three words: Oil and Gas.
That, and uranium and potash thrown in, are the reasons why our GDP is up.
And your bright lights big city theory is dead wrong. I've met with university students across the province and the number one theme that comes out is "I'd like to stay here but..."
Saskatchewan has a lot of positive things about it. I know because I moved here from the "bright lights big city."
Affordable houses and no commutes is a huge selling future. But when you move here, and you're in your thirties, you ask what the career opportunities are. All too often the answer to the question is a negative one.
Why would Fort McMurray have grown from 32,000 when I left there to 50,000 now? That cosmopolitan big city environment? No.
There is a chance to make a living and have a family. That's all.
You argument is false.
According to Chad, SK is a like Big Rock Candy Mountain and we can all collect welfare or work for the staet and live off of the resources. It's only the "bright lights" and "night life" that draw people away to other provinces. This reminds me of when these socialist clowns recently suggested lowering the drinking age to 18 to retain our youth! Chad is right, however, that Calbvert and the other mediocre commissars of the NDP are not bright lights, in fact, the evuidence is that they repell bright lights and attract dim ones.
Chad:
Why has our debt grown from 3.6 billion in 1991 to 7.6 billion plus Sask Power's 1.9 billion debt. Maybe a law should be passed to ban dividends from the four "monopoly" crowns that make a profit until their debt is paid off.
We are a have province, We have the worst health care, we have the second lowest GDP per capita and we have the stongest union laws.
The NDP must have been the ones to raise world oil and uranium prices as you suggest.
And we have the highest dependancy ratio (Chad, for example) and it's projected to get worse; we have a hollowed-out population, we have the highest crime rate of all the provinces, the roads suck and we just lost the only paper mill; but hey, if the NDP throw you some crumbs, why worry?
not to self: try to think positive, try to think positive!
David,
An increase in GDP also means there is more money around, it also means higher investment, etc.
My personal experience has been the majority of people that leave Saskatchewan do so because of the social opportunities available. We don't have mountains, etc.
This is a trend that has been happening for decades, urbanization. The big cities get bigger, small towns disappear. I would bet that SK rural pop. is mostly moving to our larger centres and our young urban pop. is moving out-of-province, but that's speculation.
But not everywhere can be everything to everyone, either. Sask offers employment and opportunity in areas AB,BC and ON can not.
Chad, those are p.poor excuses. Furthermore, I thihk that you know that investment has been going down in SK for several years: some conclude because business does not trust the NDP. Also, rural areas, in Alberta for example, are doing very well: in SK, we are seeing rural decline, but also relative stagnation in the cities. Once again, it's not the cities that draw our youth away, it's jobs: the question you have to ask yourself is this: what is driving people and jobs and investment away from SK?
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