Hamilton Lowest Unemployment Rate in Ontario?

With news that Canada blew out the predictions with 50,700 jobs jobs created in February (way higher per capita than the 200,000 plus the US did) and perhaps even more suprisingly Ontario led the way with 35,000 new jobs, where does the Hammer stand?

Helpfully this Canadian press article has the city breakdown for unemployment rates. Here's the Ontario city data:

Ottawa 6.1 (6.3)
Kingston, Ont. 6.7 (7.0)
Peterborough, Ont. 9.9 (9.8)
Oshawa, Ont. 9.4 (9.6)
Toronto 8.4 (8.2)
Hamilton, Ont. 5.7 (5.8)
St. Catharines-Niagara, Ont. 7.1 (7.1)
Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Ont. 7.5 (6.9)
Brantford, Ont. 7.7 (7.8)
Guelph, Ont. 5.8 (6.2)
London, Ont. 9.1 (8.5)
Windsor, Ont. 9.2 (9.7)
Barrie, Ont. 7.0 (7.3)
Sudbury, Ont. 8.1 (7.4)
Thunder Bay, Ont. 5.9 (5.0)

Suck it Guelph! We're number 1!

With that out of the way, the fact Hamilton has the lowest unemployment rate in Ontario is a bit of a surprise, although we're only slightly down from last month and that may have been from people leaving the labour force. Thunder Bay also cranked up from last month for some reason, although that might be a small sample size.

Still it is a good number (although it included Burlington and Grimsby I believe) and it would seem that Hamilton has managed to come out of the recession in decent form compared to the rest of Ontario.

I don't have a lot of answers why Hamilton is doing better than the rest of Ontario, but I have one theory. Hamilton is strong on regional health care (many people from surrounding regions come to Hamilton's hospitals for specialized care) and post-secondary education. As far as I know, health spending by the province is going up, although slower than in the past. Post-secondary funding as well as overall spending in the sector is doing all right. With regards to government, what is doing poorly is the rest of the provincial government. The province has basically frozen employment at the ministries and also frozen salaries. That really affects somewhere like Toronto where the lion's share of the provincial government's employment is located, plus some other locales to a much lesser extent. Hamilton barely has any provincial workers compared to the provincial average so those spending cuts have almost no effect on the local economy. Not the only factor, but it certainly affects Toronto.

There's still also some boom activity with regards to people seeking cheaper housing in Hamilton versus the GTA. Houses may cease rising in value in Toronto, however the gradient will still be there and people priced out of the market will continue to come to Hamilton.

Some comments about some other locales. KW went from 6.9 to 7.5 which is significantly higher than Hamilton. This could be due to fallout from layoffs from Rim and knockoff effects from that.

Peterborough has the highest rate currently and I don't know enough to comment. Oshawa is also high which is probably effects from lower car and truck production since the recession started.

I'm not sure when Hamilton has last had the lowest unemployment rate in Ontario, but it is interesting.