economy
ASYMPTOTIC GOODS AND SERVICES EMPLOYMENT While employment in British Columbia exceeded its pre-pandemic level many months ago, the number of jobs province-wide remains below its pre-pandemic trend.
By June 2021, employment in British Columbia had, in a sense, recovered from the crater caused by the pandemic. Specifically, the province’s employment base consistently exceeded 2.64 million jobs (the scale of employment in February 2020) each month thereafter, with the number of jobs generally growing from month-to-month since then. This isn’t the whole story, however. Two observations are worth noting as they relate to high-level employment trends in BC. The first is that total employment has not fully gotten back on track since the pandemic— and by that we mean, it hasn't achieved the
pre-pandemic trend in job counts that we would have seen in the absence of the pandemic (and all else being equal). In aggregate, service sector employment is still 86,000 jobs (4%) below trend as of August 2022, while goods sector employment is lagging by 31,000 jobs (6%). The second takeaway from the most recent data is the retreat in employment we saw in August, with there being 28,000 fewer jobs province-wide (on a seasonally-adjusted basis) than in July. Whether this is merely a blip or the beginning of a new trend deserves watching in the coming months.
ON THE MEND, BUT STILL OFF-TREND: PART I
2,500
1,000
pandemic begins EARLY
900
2,000
800
services job gap -86,000
700
1,500
600
500
goods job gap -31,000
1,000
400
300
500
200
100
0
0
ACTUAL EMPLOYMENT, SERVICES LEFT AXIS
ACTUAL EMPLOYMENT, GOODS RIGHT AXIS
PROJECTED EMPLOYMENT
DATA: EMPLOYMENT BY INDUSTRY, MONTHLY, SEASONALLY-ADJUSTED, BRITISH COLUMBIA
SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA. TABLE 14-10-0355-01
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