Plus, public service strike could start to have ripple effects on the broader B.C. economy<\/p>\n
Hiring picked up\u00a0in Canada in September after a slight contraction in August \u2014\u00a0but B.C. is lagging and the provincial unemployment rate is rising.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We still have one of the lowest unemployment rates amongst the major provinces,” Jobs and Economic Development Minister Ravi Kahlon said.\u00a0\u00a0“But we also have had headwinds.”<\/p>\n
Looming in the background are added\u00a0concerns that the public service strike could have knock-on effects for the broader economy.<\/p>\n
“It can have impacts on people’s employment and their communities,” Kahlon said.<\/p>\n
The latest Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada, released on Friday, Oct. 10, shows job gains\u00a0for Canada as a whole\u00a0in September, but these are unevenly distributed.<\/p>\n
A big rebound was\u00a0seen in Alberta, which shed 14,000 jobs in August but added 43,000 in September. B.C. lost 16,000 in August, but only gained 7,800 in September.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, B.C.’s unemployment rate ticked up 0.2 percentage points to 6.4 per cent. This is still below the national average of 7.1 per cent.<\/p>\n
The youth unemployment rate \u2014 for ages 15 to 24 \u2014\u00a0rose even more in B.C.,\u00a0ticking up to 13.7 per cent from 12.8\u00a0per cent. This is still lower than the national rate,\u00a0which rose to 14.7 per cent from 14.4 per cent.<\/p>\n
Gavin Dew, the B.C. Conservative critic for small business and innovation, said this is the number that continues to worry him month after month.<\/p>\n
“We’re seeing generational highs in youth unemployment in B.C. and across the country, and that means that young people are missing out on the opportunity to get onto the ladder to success,” he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
Kahlon\u00a0agrees that youth unemployment\u00a0is a concern for the province. He said\u00a0more needs to be done in conjunction with the federal government to ensure young people have the right skills to succeed in a changing\u00a0economic landscape.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s something that we need to, quite frankly, have a national conversation about \u2014\u00a0how do we create those opportunities,” he said.<\/p>\n
Dew is also raising\u00a0the alarm over small business confidence, which he says is being negatively impacted by street disorder in the downtown core areas of many B.C. cities.<\/p>\n
“Those jobs have been really just cratered by the death of our downtowns,” Dew said.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0said that there is\u00a0an ongoing “doom loop” of lower discretionary spending feeding\u00a0small business revenue loss.<\/p>\n
This affects many young people, because first jobs are often in retail or restaurants, he said.<\/p>\n
Kahlon is also worried about the\u00a0forestry sector, which was recently hit\u00a0with an effective tax rate on exports to the U.S. of 45 per cent, with combined duties and tariffs.<\/p>\n
“The new duties that were just announced by the U.S. government are kicking in next week, and that means it’s going to be some tough decisions in communities throughout the province,” he said.<\/p>\n
Looming economic impact of the public service strike<\/strong><\/p>\n With more than 25,000 core public service workers on strike, everything from project permitting to liquor sales is\u00a0being delayed or\u00a0put on hold.<\/p>\n “I don’t have a crystal ball to look into all the places where there may be impacts,” Kahlon said. “The main message here is,\u00a0we just need to get an agreement. We need to get back to the table and resolve this issue because it can have an impact on the economy.”<\/p>\n Restaurant owners\u00a0are particularly concerned about the strike\u00a0because they rely on liquor sales for a big part of their revenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Some of them are already starting to adjust their operating hours, which means staff aren’t\u00a0getting their hours,” said\u00a0Mark von Schellwitz, the B.C.-area vice-president for Restaurants Canada, an industry group.\u00a0“So it’s already impacting the job situation.”<\/p>\n Restaurants and bars are in a tough spot because they are only allowed to buy alcohol products from provincial distributors, select local wineries and breweries,\u00a0or\u00a0B.C. Liquor stores, but cannot buy from private liquor stores.<\/p>\n The strike has now closed the distribution warehouses and liquor stores. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey suggested this week that restaurants would be OK because they could buy from local wineries and breweries. Von Schellwitz said local products\u00a0are only a “drop in the bucket” in terms of overall sales.<\/p>\n He met with Premier David Eby and Agriculture and Food Minister Lana Popham to propose workarounds,\u00a0including allowing restaurants to buy from private stores. They looked into it, but then\u00a0told him liquor policy changes of this nature are not possible during a strike.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, restaurants are trying to move past a record year for\u00a0bankruptcies in 2024. Dew blamed this on vandalism and violence in business districts. Von\u00a0Schellwitz said that all around, restaurants are struggling to keep the doors open.<\/p>\n “It seems like every single time we make a bit of headway \u2014 we’re still trying to fully recover from the pandemic \u2014 there’s another challenge, another obstacle in our way,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plus, public service strike could start to have ripple effects on the broader B.C. economy Hiring picked up\u00a0in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":296995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[151522,64,420,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-296994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-breaking-newsjobs","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-jobs","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115360629063932718","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}