***Summary***
The month of January did not look very good for British Columbia in economic standards. In January, there were 9,100 jobs lost due to the reccession. Also in December, there were 12,800 that were cut from the labour force. Most of Canada has seen a steady economic recovery as B.C. unemployment rises. The 20,000 plus jobs that were lost since December puts British Columbia above all provinces except for the Maritimes. The job losses occured mostly in manufacturing, forestry and construction. For the rest of Canada, there were about 69,000 jobs added to the economy. Still, the unemployment rate increased from 7.6 to 7.8 nationally because of more than 100,000 people looking for work. Ken Peacock, director of the BC Business council says however, these economic indicators are inaccurate compared to other provinces. It actually shows that the BC economy is picking up with retailers and small businesses beginning to hire again.
***Connections***
Chapter 5 of the textbook talks about unemployment and GDP as economic indicators. Many unemployment indicators are not included in the unemployment sample. These criteria include things such as people who have not been actively looking for work in the past 4 weeks and students who have graduated school and have not been able to find a job etc. If you look at the stats, there are alot of people who have given up looking for job in the past 4 weeks because there is nothing out there. Also there are hundreds of thousands of new college graduates who are unable to find a job. As you can see, the unemployment rate is reduced by the actual amount of the unemployed. This is why I think people often oversee the unemployment rate as the main economic indicator.
***Reflections***
The economic indicators put out by the Canadian government are not accurate in my opinion as stated before. While it may seem like the B.C. economy is not stable, I believe that it is. People are still spending as much as they were without jobs. E.I. is also a way for people to get money for the time being while looking for a job. Being paid at 65% of your annual salary is pretty good for doing nothing. This makes the numbers unstable because there is no accurate number of people on employment insurance included in the sample.
