A Closer Look at Ontario's June 2014 Employment Numbers

A blogged briefly about the poor Ontario jobs numbers for June, but I said I would take a closer look so I am.

Total employment in June from Statscan was 6,900,800. That was down -0.5% from June and up 0.1% from the previous year. Considering that population growth was around 0.9% for Ontario currently, that's quite poor performance and problematic for tax revenues and GDP growth.

Here's the population numbers for the last six months:
December 11,267,600
January, 11,278,400
February 11,287,300
March 11,298,600
April11,313,900
May 11,323,300
June 11,336,000

Employment
December 6,876,800
January 6,882,800
February 6,888,900
March 6,902,300
April 6,919,900
May 6,934,700
June 6,900,800

Full-Time Employment
December 5,577,500
January 5,600,600
February 5,605,900
March 5,599,400
April 5,625,200
May 5,594,800
June 5,575,900

Part-Time Employment
December 1,299,200
January 1,282,200
February 1,283,000
March 1,302,900
April 1,294,000
May 1,339,900
June 1,324,900

Looking over the past six months, the numbers aren't great. Population is up 0.61% compared to overall employment up 0.35%. Considerably more disturbing is that full-time employment over the past six months is actually down 0.03%. That's not good for Ontario's GDP growth over the first half nor is good for provincial tax revenues, as Ontario's income taxes are highly reliant on surtaxes targeted towards those earning above the median.

Part-time was at least up 1.98%, although that indicates the jobs Ontario is creating are low paying part-time jobs that as mentioned earlier, don't pay a lot in provincial income taxes.