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rfmcdonaldTavia Grant's article in The Globe and Mail makes for disturbing reading. The idea that smaller urban centres in central and eastern Canada tend to be experiencing at best stagnation in jobs, never mind income, is disturbing. I like the idea of a well-balanced urban hierarchy. (Charlottetown, happily, is doing well, with four thousand new jobs since 2005.)
New analysis by the Conference Board of Canada finds that 21 of the 46 medium-sized cities it tracks haven’t yet seen employment return to pre-recession levels.
In some cases, the decline is dramatic. Labour markets in New Glasgow, N.S.; Miramichi, N.B.; Saint-Hyacinthe, Que.; Medicine Hat, Alta.; and Vernon, B.C., have suffered a marked drop in the past decade.
“This is a troubling turn of events, given that these mid-sized cities play an important role as economic engines in their respective regions,” said Mario Lefebvre, director of the Centre for Municipal Studies. While the country – at an aggregate level – may have regained the jobs lost in the recession, “the employment picture has been uneven among Canada’s mid-sized cities over the past decade or so.”
Six mid-sized cities posted average job gains of at least 3 per cent a year – which amounts to growth of more than 20 per cent in the past seven years. They are: Brockville and Leamington in Ontario; Lethbridge and Wood Buffalo in Alberta; and Chilliwack and Duncan in British Columbia.
Most of these cities had been bustling up until the 2008-2009 recession. But the ensuing downturn caused economies to contract in 29 of the cities tracked. The recession was “particularly painful” for medium-sized cities in Ontario, the report said, where economies shrank in all 11 of these urban centres. By contrast, seven of 10 mid-sized cities in Atlantic Canada posted growth even through this period.
