Ontario's Demographics: Intra-Provincial Migration, People Still Leaving Ontario

It has been sometime since I've looked at Ontario's demographics, especially my favourite topic, intra-provincial migration. Here's my last post on it.

The province has released (on June 18th) the first quarter of 2014 numbers here. From the report:

"Over the last 12 months, Ontario’s population grew by 122,544 or 0.9%, lower than growth of 129,584 during the previous year. Among the provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan had the highest population growth rates (3.2% and 1.9% respectively). Canada’s population growth rate over the period was 1.1%."

Ontario's population is 13,620,600 by April 1st 2014. So the 0.9% growth rate seems to be the new normal for Ontario, less than the Canadian average. That's important because given Ontario's low productivity growth, the low population growth tends to dominate the rather low GDP growth for Ontario. Ontario has had GDP growth rates of 1.3% in both 2012 and 2013, the majority of which would have been from population growth. As Ontario's population growth ebbs lower, one would expect overall GDP growth to also ebb lower.

Here's the part about intra-provincial migration:

"In the first quarter of 2014, Ontario had a net loss of 4,654 people to other provinces compared to a net loss of 6,823 people in the same quarter of 2013. Ontario experienced net gains in its exchanges with four of the 12 other provinces and territories, with the largest net gains from Quebec (1,133) and New Brunswick (276). Ontario’s largest net losses were with Alberta (-4,210) and British Columbia (-713). Over the last 12 months, Ontario’s total net interprovincial migration loss was 10,870 compared to a net loss of 21,366 during the previous year."

I'm actually surprised that Ontario did so much better over the past 12 months compared to the previous 12 months. I'm not really sure why. Here's a breakdown of the intra-provincial numbers over the past few quarters:

People coming to Ontario from other provinces:

Third Quarter 2012, 22,300
Fourth Quarter 2012, 11,000
First Quarter 2013, 13,500
Second Quarter 2013, 22,900
Third Quarter 2013, 20,600
Fourth Quarter 2014, 13,500
First Quarter 2014, 13,500

Here's the numbers for people leaving Ontario for other provinces:

Third Quarter 2012, 27,900
Fourth Quarter 2012, 15,100
First Quarter 2013, 20,400
Second Quarter 2013, 27,700
Third Quarter 2013, 21,600
Fourth Quarter 2014, 13,900
First Quarter 2014, 18,200

Departures Minus Arrivals:
Third Quarter 2012, 5,600
Fourth Quarter 2012, 4,100
First Quarter 2013, 6,900
Second Quarter 2013, 6,800
Third Quarter 2013, 1000
Fourth Quarter 2014, 400
First Quarter 2014,  4,700

What's interesting about these numbers is the big decrease in Ontario's losses to other provinces after the second quarter of 2013. For the first quarter of 2014 the departures minus arrivals bumped up again. The second quarter numbers should be interesting since that is when people seem to move the most. Also I would be curious to know how long Ontario has been negative for intra-provincial migration. According to this, Alberta's GDP growth in 2013 was 3.9%. Assuming population growth for Alberta was also 3.2% for 2013, that's GDP growth per capita of 0.68% versus 0.40% for Ontario. That doesn't really seem like much more.

One last point. If Alberta's population grew by a massive 3.2% in the last 12 months how does that compare to their GDP growth and thus what is their GDP growth per capita?