An economic tale of two cities: employment ups and downs.

• Author: Wareing, Andrew
• Position: The Issue

It is a classic tale of two cities; two cities in Northern Ontario, one experiencing a reasonably strong job market, while the other is experiencing a definite decline marked by a rise in its unemployment rate.

Thunder Bay Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) economist Carrie Vescio says that Thunder Bay's economy is apparently keeping and possibly even creating jobs.

"Things are stable," Vescio says. "We've got a good employment rate, certainly much better in this third quarter than it was in the third quarter of 2002. We've got an employment rate of 64.4, up from a rate last year of 61.3 for the same time last year. That's the rate of working-age people who are actually employed and it's a much better indicator of what the underlying labour market is like, versus the unemployment rate."

She says the biggest change has occurred in the wholesale and retail trades, which experienced a 26 per cent growth over the same time last.

"That has been the force of the job growth," Vescio says. "It's probably a combination of higher staffing levels and new stores. We've had some big-box expansion."

Another area of significant growth has been in the construction trades. One of the primary drivers of that growth has been from the development of the new Thunder Bay Regional Hospital, which was built to replace the two current hospitals that sit on opposite ends of the city.

"That's a huge construction project that generated a lot of employment," she says. "It will be interesting to see. (The end of the project) will possibly have a huge impact (on employment numbers), but we'll be watching for that as we move into the winter, when we would expect employment to begin declining a bit anyway."

Vescio says youth out-migration continues to be a problem for many Northern Ontario communities and Thunder Bay has certainly been no exception. The current economic environment bodes well to reverse the out-migration trend.

"If we continue to see relatively good results in terms of employment, you might be able to expect that people won't leave as readily," she says. "One of the complaints you hear when you talk about youth out-migration is that youth don't feel there's any future for them. As long as we continue to grow jobs and remain relatively healthy (as an economy), perhaps that will have some impact on (out-migration)."

But a different story is unfolding in the northeast in Greater Sudbury where the unemployed are leaving town...