Summing up the Saskatchewan labor market performance last month is pretty easy. It went down.
Virtually every metric and indicator that StatsCan follows in developing its monthly jobs report was down in Saskatchewan. But that is not completely bad. For example, the unemployment rate went down.
But so did the participation rate and the employment rate. And the size of the workforce went down – about 4,000 – last month which is usually a sign that people have given up on their search for a job or have left the province. Even the estimated population was down which might mean at least a few are looking for greener pastures.
And the number of people with a full-time job went down – it pulled back by 2,000. About the only thing that went up was part-time employment.
The big indicator – the unemployment rate – went down too. That is generally perceived as a good news development but in this case it has more to do with people giving up on finding a job than it does with any improvement in employment growth.
