We got the monthly job numbers last Friday. They covered developments that took place in November as Saskatchewan fared reasonably well on the national stage even though we didn’t create as many jobs as we welcomed new residents to the province.
And of the 24,000 new positions Saskatchewan employers generated in the past year, the bulk of them were in the two major cities. Regina posted an increase of 10,500 while Saskatoon saw nearly 12,000.
Both cities have unemployment rates of just over five per cent which is in the lower end of the range nationally. Only places like Victoria, Kelowna and Winnipeg are lower in the west. Many smaller centres in Ontario and Quebec also have low unemployment as prospective workers – predominantly new immigrants – tend to land in the big cities rather than smaller ones.
Regionally within the province, the Yorkton-Melville district saw the strongest job growth outside the two major centres. Northern Saskatchewan including Prince Albert, on the other hand, saw their three-month rolling average of job numbers contract by about 3,000 in November and the Moose Jaw-Swift Current corridor dropped 5,000.
