Math is hard

Boy, this is a doozy.

The Telegram's James McLeod reports today:

It's unclear how the $5 billion in [federal] budget cuts will affect the province exactly, but Dunderdale said she only expects a handful of job cuts.

"We've got about 600 federal jobs here in the province," she said.

"If the cuts are going to be about five or six per cent, then that'll translate into between 20 and 30 jobs for us."

As per Statscan's CANSIM Table 183-0002, there was an annualized average of about 7400 full-time-equivalent (FTE) federal government jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2011.

A five to six percent reduction in federal employment, if applied uniformly across the country, would result in the elimination of about 375 to 450 fedgov FTEs jobs in the province.


* Corrigendum, April 10th: An eagle-eyed economagician points out that the CANSIM table in question counts in actual jobs, not Full-Time Equivalents. Derp.