[LINK] "'Confidence rampant' in Atlantic Canada as job seekers shun path of east resistance"

[rfmcdonald]

This Tavia Grant article in The Globe and Mail today certainly caught my attention.

George Halliwell has been a head hunter in Charlottetown for the past seven years and has never seen such a wave of Canadians clamouring to move east.

"I'm searching for an engineer in Halifax right now - and everyone from the automotive industry in Ontario is applying for the job. They might make $60,000 in Toronto or Guelph, but they're willing to take $50,000 here because of the housing costs, the way of life is a lot simpler, there are no traffic jams and it's more family oriented."

Businesses are benefiting because they can choose from a wider pool of skilled talent, says Mr. Halliwell, who does recruiting across Canada. "We're able to relocate people now who otherwise wouldn't think of coming to the Maritimes."

His observations come as a Manpower Canada survey this month showed employers in Charlottetown are the most optimistic in the country about future hiring plans.
"Confidence is rampant," says Douglas Coles, vice-president of Coles Associates, who has hired two engineers recently and plans to hire more to help design new hotels, schools and hospitals in the province.

The upbeat mood isn't confined to Charlottetown. Atlantic Canada - much of which never fully boomed in the good times - has so far been insulated from the worst. Job losses have been more muted. Retail spending is outpacing the rest of the country. And the expected decline in house prices in other parts of the country this year isn't forecast to occur in the East.

"We don't make cars. And we don't have the same exposure to commodities," says Charles Cirtwill, Halifax-based executive vice-president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. "We have a much more diversified economy, and a few areas [such as financial services] are even growing."

The logic makes sense, I suppose, but it's also kind of scary. Atlantic Canada as the lone economic hot spot in Canada? Things have changed.