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By Kathy Michaels
Gains made in Kelowna’s labour market receded last month. Statistics Canada released their monthly Labour Market survey this morning, stating that local unemployment rose to 7.1 per cent in December from 5.6 per cent in November. Year over year the rate rose as well, as unemployment rate for December 2008 was 5.8 per cent.
While a rising unemployment rate could look disheartening, Statistics Canada’s Danielle Zietsma said Kelowna is also a bit of an anomaly as the number of people employed actually increased as well.
In December of 2008 there were 93,000 Kelowna residents in the workforce, while last December there were 103,000 locals working.
“Generally when employment goes up like that, you are looking for a big increase in population, but you didn’t have a population increase as big as your employment increase,” she said, adding employment growth was in the area of 10 per cent, while the population increase for this city sat at 2.4 per cent.
“It’s not typical of the trend, and it’s more positive of a picture than seen nationally,” she said.
While Zietsma didn’t have statistics to explain the rise in job creation and unemployment locally, the answer could be held at local job banks.
Last month Barbara Miller, Client Services co-ordinator at Kelowna’s Global Transition Consulting Inc., told Kelowna.com that in her decades of experience of lining up job seekers with ideal work, the clients have never been so diverse.
“We’re getting people who haven’t had to look for work in years, and everything has changed since the last time,” she said. She’s seen everything from housewives re-entering the workforce to men who have had manufacturing jobs for decades. There’s also a healthy supply of those who are pulling out of retirement in need of work.
Nationally, there were similar losses in employment. In December, employers cut 2,600 jobs after hefty hiring in November. The job losses, which followed a 79,000-job gain in November, are small enough to leave the national unemployment rate unchanged at 8.5 per cent.
kathy@kelowna.com
Tags: Kelowna, Labour Force Survey, unemployment
