Tag: jobs

How do we measure a politician's job record?

Today on the campaign trail, New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant was talking about his job creation plan and hammering the government of incumbent Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward government because it “it lost 3,900 jobs since October 2010, lost, more specifically, 6,500 full-time jobs.”

That phrase “since October 2010” is an important qualifier but, in my view, an odd one as he and anyone else should be measuring the Alward government’s job performance record from September 2010, the month in which Alward was elected premier. In fact, as I point out in this review of the Alward government’s jobs record, the record is even worse if you start from September 2010 rather than October 2010.

So why September and not October? Continue reading How do we measure a politician's job record?

The Alward jobs record: Not good

AlwardHed
The record on job creation for New Brunswick Premier David Alward — fighting for re-election right now — has been rotten. (KRIS SIMS/Sun News Network)

Campaigning with Justin Trudeau on the weekend, New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant told reporters, “The plan of David Alward and the Conservatives is not at all concrete. When you look at their record on job creation, since 2010 we’ve lost 3,900 jobs.”

Not true.

It’s actually much worse. The province has lost 4,800 jobs since 2010. (I’m assuming that when Gallant says “since 2010” he means, “since the September 2010 election that Alward won”) Continue reading The Alward jobs record: Not good

The Harper jobs record? Depends on how you slice it …

LFP

In our newspapers Monday, I write about Finance Minister Joe Oliver’s visits beginning Monday through southwestern Ontario, an area of the country that’s been particularly hard hit by job losses, mostly in the manufacturing sector. You can read the column here.

But here, in this post, is some more background on what I’ll call the “Harper Jobs Record” based on data from Statstics Canada monthly labour force survey.

Economists, traders, and investors prefer to work in increments of “last month”, and “last quarter” but for the purposes of this post I will work mostly in political increments, i.e. since “last election” or since “Harper took over”. That said, we will, like economists, traders, and investors, find common ground in using a 12-month comparison for some data. Continue reading The Harper jobs record? Depends on how you slice it …

Ahead of Ontario election, The final tale of the tape on job numbers

Statistics Canada was out this morning with the final jobs report before Ontarians head to the polls next Thursday.

Here, then, are some aggregate numbers on the Liberal record in office so far as jobs go. Choose which one you like to make your preferred political point: Continue reading Ahead of Ontario election, The final tale of the tape on job numbers

The wonky math in Tim Hudak's new "I Want To Work" ad

This is the latest ad from the Ontario PC Party, which has built its campaign around what it calls its “Million Jobs Plan”. In short, Hudak believes that if Ontarians can leave the PCs in charge in government for the next eight years, the province will end up with 1 million more net new jobs. Western University economist Mike Moffatt has put that promise in context and, in his judgement, believes that that is an “ambitious — but not impossible — target.”

But in this new ad, Hudak is not talking about the million jobs he will create in 8 years. In this ad, he is standing in the legislature at Queen’s Park and and says: “There are 1 million people out of work.” Now I’m assuming that, as this is being released in the midst of an Ontario general election and he made that comment in the Ontario legislature, we ought to interpret what he said as there are 1 million Ontarians out of work. But that’s just not true. Continue reading The wonky math in Tim Hudak's new "I Want To Work" ad

Jobs and politics: Devastating data for the incumbent in Quebec

For this tweet, CAQ Leader François Legault was cherry-picking one of the worst data points for Quebec in today’s monthly jobs report from Statistics Canada but he had lots to choose from. It was a very bleak report card for the PQ government of Premier Pauline Marois. The highlight? Statistics Canada found that, in the space of one month between January and February this year, 25,500 jobs disappeared in the province.   Continue reading Jobs and politics: Devastating data for the incumbent in Quebec

No other way to say it: The BC Government is fudging its job creation record

  • While Clark campaigns to be number one on job creation, BC is actually the worst in the West and 4th worst in Canada
  • BC government is making false claims about the performance of the BC Jobs Plan

The headline news from Statistics Canada Friday morning was not good for the government of Premier Christy Clark. In it’s monthly jobs report, Statscan reported an unexpected and surprising jobs boom in Ontario and Quebec but the worst performing province in November compared to October was B.C. Statscan reported 4,700 jobs were lost in B.C. in the month and the unemployment rate rose to 6.8% from 6.7%. Continue reading No other way to say it: The BC Government is fudging its job creation record

Latest job numbers: BC is number one — in job losses

“I’m going to run on (being) number one in job creation,” BC Premier Christy Clark told the Liberal Party of BC convention last Saturday, boasting at one point that BC had created 57,000 jobs and that that was more than any province in Canada.

At the time, as I pointed out in a blog post, that claim was not true based on the most recent 12 consecutive months of jobs data for BC (and the country) as provided by Statistics Canada.

On Saturday, the most recent numbers available were for September, 2012.

Today, Statistics Canada released the numbers for October, 2012 and they were awful for British Columbia.

Continue reading Latest job numbers: BC is number one — in job losses