Ontario Loses 34,000 Jobs in November 2014, Over A Year, Population Growth Outpaces Employment Growth

I already blogged about Canada's overall unemployment today however I hadn't checked the Ontario November numbers in depth, only knowing they had declined. However after looking at the numbers at Statscan, Ontario declined by a relatively large 34,000 jobs, especially compared to the fact Canada itself lost only 10,700 jobs.

Compared with a year ago the province gained 53,000 jobs, an 0.8 % increase. That sounds good, but the labour force population increased by 127,100 over the year, a 1.1% increase so the percentage of employed Ontarians actually decreased. That obviously has negative implications for the Ontario budget, as taxes are generally going to paid by employees while expenditures will be based on the entire population.

The fact that Ontario's labour force population has increased at a 1.1% rate over the past year is interesting in and of it self, because it had been lower recently. Ontario's GDP growth in large part has been a story of population growth rather than GDP growth per capita (i.e. productivity growth).