Don Mills (II)

VOCM gave another account of Don Mills' talk on Thursday:

The President and CEO of Corporate Research Associates, Don Mills, told delegates this province was the only place in North America that weathered the economic recession unscathed and reported that the consumer confidence of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians remains high.

Unscathed?

In fact, as measured by the employment figures, the Newfoundland and Labrador labour force was the canary in the economic coal mine. The jobs market soured the earliest, declined at the steepest rate, and hit the deepest lows, as compared to the other provinces and to the comparative figure for all provinces combined.

This graph shows the change in employment in each province, and for the sum of all provinces, indexed against the figure for January 2008, the start of the year in which the recession began. (Data for any given month is the twelve-month trailing average.)

[Data source: Statistics Canada table 282-0007]

Yes, the provincial employment picture turned around, and dramatically, in 2010, but it was only after a great deal of economic pain. Scathe, you might call it, pace Don Mills.

The hit to the labour market was cleverly masked by a mixture of Officially Optimistic HappyTalk and an anemic political and economic press that is centred in the Navel of the Universe and covers political and economic issues all across the province from Pouch Cove to Foxtrap. You want unscathed? Try the two easternmost Prairie provinces where there was in effect no jobs recession at all.

At least up to the middle part of 2010, jobs growth in the province was driven by growth in public-sector jobs — not private-sector hires, not self-employment. Furthermore, overall employment data shows that full-time work is still lagging. Part-time employment regained January 2008 levels in April of 2010; full-time employment did not do so until August.

Part-time employment at the end of 2010 was 5% higher than it was at the start of 2008; full-time employment was up just 2% over the same time period.