The monthly report on employment rolls in the province – this one for November – was another mixed bag.
We tend to see some big swings in these numbers – we’ll see the number of jobs go up by 5,000 one month and down by an equivalent number the following one, suggesting the sample size they assign to Saskatchewan may lead to volatility in the numbers.
For November it was not so much a big change in job numbers but rather in the number of people in the workforce. It dropped by 5,000, meaning that many people either gave up on a job hunt or left the province. So, with a smaller pool of people in a position to hold a job, our unemployment rate went down by a full percentage point giving us the third-lowest rate in the country.
Where things did change, according to this report, was the mix of employment. There were 5,500 new full-time jobs and a loss of 4,100 part-time spots suggesting employers were converting part-timers into full-time employees as they scramble to find talent as the labor pool contracts.
