Apples and oranges

Today’s Telegram editorial puts a strange footnote to a line from Gary Lunn: The Speech He Never Gave:

“In a province so rich in oil and gas potential, how can it be that 50 per cent of working-age people are not working? That is 10 per cent below the national unemployment average.” (Note: that curious statistic includes everyone from teenagers to retirees; Nova Scotia’s number is 64 per cent.)

First of all, that’s not so. The employment rate in NL is 51.5% in May, down slightly from April. Some take that figure, subtract it from 100%, and come up with the figure of “people who are not working”, whether through unemployment or otherwise. The number for Nova Scotia, then, of people who “are not working”, is 100% - 63.5% = 36.5%. When you are working with statistics, you have to compare apples to apples, not oranges.

Secondly, there’s nothing “curious” about the statistic: that’s how you calculate the participation rate, in every province and nationally. That’s how you get the apples, and the oranges, you want to compare and contrast in the first place.

Rather than deal with the message of the stats, the provincial government, and the usual gang of anti-Confederates, have trotted out this shoot-the-messenger argument, whether against Derek DeCloet, Jeffery Simpson, Gary Lunn, or the statistics themselves. It’s disappointing to see the Telegram picking it up as well. Not only did the editorialist compare apples to oranges, he or she then shot the guy who brought the apples.

Not polite.

Their energies would be better spent asking why it is that the employment and participation rates are consistently so low and why the unemployment rate is consistently so high.

And no, the facile “because of all the giveaways” won’t cut it.