British Columbia’s recent drop in part-time jobs may be attributed to the winding down of seasonal jobs in the winter tourism industry, says the president and CEO of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce.
“This time of year it wouldn’t be surprising to see a decline in some of that part-time share of the workforce,” Val Litwin told the Courier. “Our ski resort communities are literally saying goodbye to the season and to thousands of employees across B.C.”
Earlier this week, a report released by Statistics Canadashowed that although 15,000 part-time jobs were lost in April — a 2.9 per cent drop from the previous month — B.C. continues to possess some of the best job numbers in the country.
The province had a net gain of 2,900 jobs during the last month, bringing the employment rate up 0.1 per cent. This included over 18,000 new full-time jobs.
B.C.’s unemployment rate also remained the lowest of all provinces in the country, at five per cent. This was a slight increase from the previous month’s mark of 4.7 per cent, and according to StatCan was a result of more people deciding to look for work.
Litwin said B.C.’s ability to create jobs lies in its diverse range of economic drivers.
“We’ve got a healthy resource economy, we’ve got a healthy tech economy, we’ve got a healthy tourism economy, we’ve got an incredible agrofoods sector,” Litwin said. “So one of our real strengths is the diversified base we have in B.C.”
Another strength, Litwin says, is the broad range of international trading partners the province conducts business with. While the United States is still B.C.’s dominant trading partner, accounting for 54 per cent of all trade, this is small in comparison to a province like Alberta, whose trade share with our southern giant is over 80 per cent.
StatCan released figures on city unemployment as well, which showed B.C. cities possessed low unemployment rates compared to the rest of the country. Vancouver’s mark of 4.1 per cent was good for the third lowest rate among all urban centres, trailing only Quebec City (3.7 per cent) and Peterborough, Ont. (3.8 per cent).
Other B.C. cities included in the unemployment measurement were Victoria (4.2 per cent), Abbotsford (4.4 per cent), and Kelowna (4.8 per cent). All of these fell under the national unemployment average, which was counted as 5.8 per cent for the month of April.
