Can you say election?
That brings the total to 11,000.That’s how many jobs Saskatchewan is supposed to have lost in the past two months, according to the employment numbers released Friday by StatsCan. That’s a lot of people – roughly the number of workers in a city the size of Yorkton – even though we have not seen any major workforce disruptions. There have been no massive layoffs, no failure of a major employer.
So how can we lose 6,500 positions in June and a further 4,500 last month? StatsCan really has no explanation but one of the problems with these monthly reports is that they are based on a survey, not some review of actual employer payrolls. So the results can be skewed by their choice of sample audience. Or, if you look at what happened in the months leading up the last federal election job numbers took wild swings then too, leaving the cynics to speculate on political interference. Especially given that the job picture in Ontario was surprisingly rosy in this report.
