The power of positive thinking

The perennial optimist is feeling economistic:

Economist Calls for Prosperity Plan
June 10, 2009

Memorial University economist, Dr. Wade Locke, says he'd like to see the province put a prosperity plan in place. Locke says the province has fared well during the economic recession and upcoming projects will bring the province to a new level of prosperity.

It would — scratch that, it will — be interesting to see which parts of the province have “fared well” during the economic recession. Economic recessions, after all, are known for being happy times.

As the treasonous BondPapers notes, year over year, the percentage change in the employment figure is staggering.

Adjusted for seasonality, the “employment force” — the overall number of people working, whether full-time or part-time — has contracted by over 5% in the past year. To put that into historical perspective, this graph shows the same data as in the BondPapers posting… only projected back in time for as long as StatsCan has comparable data on the subject, back to 1977:

The year-over-year decline of 5.3% observed in Newfoundland and Labrador from May to May is on par with the declines observed during the bruising North American and international recessions of 1981 and 1991, and with the more localized mid-1990s job losses that may be related to the end of major onshore Hibernia work and the end of the NCARP/TAGS program.

This second graph “zooms in” on more recent trends. It is the same data as in the above graph, only for this decade only. Periods in which the employment picture was better than the same month one year before are shown as green peaks. Periods in which it is worse are red valleys.

This corner, for one, would hate to see what these figures would look like, had the province not fared so well during the current recession.