It was hard to miss all of the talk about the job numbers yesterday – particularly as pretty much every Liberal minister, MP and candidate started sharing pre-generated memes about how great the economy is doing under this government (with the caveat that there’s still more work to do). This, like news of much higher than expected GDP growth, are good headlines with some underlying weakness being masked, and as economist Trevor Tombe explains, those good numbers are masking some very real problems in Alberta.
And in Alberta specifically, the disappointing trend continues. Unemployment up in August to 7.2%. In past year and a half, the unemployment trend has increased a half point. #ableg pic.twitter.com/iTX3c15vf3
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
Another way to see it is here (one of the starkest illustrations of the age/gender differences). Still no recovery for young men; but now older men (55+) have seen systematic deterioration. Employment rate fallen by over 4 points since Oct 2014 (same as worst point in recession) pic.twitter.com/GU8upAJdoP
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
So, broad weakness remains the key feature of Alberta's labour market recent recovery. To see this even more clearly, I want to unpack this province's unemployment rate a little bit…. pic.twitter.com/CDfQYzzY1r
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
(Note: have to look at prime-age here since 15+ graph heavily distorted by aging/retiring population that naturally pulls down the participation rate.)
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
The issue of young men in that province is one that I’m not sure enough levels of government are paying sufficient attention to, as the Alberta government seems to think that all that’s needed is for the oil patch to revive and it’s problem solved, but with world oil prices depressed and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, that means the prospect for these young men – many of whom are under-educated because of the lure of high-paying oil patch jobs – are not going to be good in the shorter term. That’s additionally a problem when you have a government that feeds the people a diet of lies and snake oil to keep them angry at imaginary reasons why they’re being kept down (currently Justin Trudeau), because angry young men can be a dangerous thing if allowed to fester. And for the federal government’s part, I wonder just how much their retraining programming is penetrating given that jobs they could be retraining for couldn’t necessarily match the promised paydays of oil jobs in a boom – but that becomes a problem of waiting for the next boom (where the money will get pissed away, like it does every time no matter how often they promise that this time it will be different – really!).
Some of this will come up in the election – not just the lies that Kenney and company are pushing, but the NDP and Greens are trying to make some hay here, as both want to retrain these workers for the “green economy” in some vague way, while the Greens in particular think they could put them to work capping old orphan wells as both an environmental and job-creation measure, but it’s also one that is both expensive, and if the government just starts doing this on its own, it essentially lets the industry off the hook and demonstrates that the “polluter pays” principle is for naught. Add to that, the promises of green jobs retraining falls back to the issue of some of them waiting on the promises of the bigger paydays in a future oil boom, so there is no guarantee that green jobs will be attractive to this cohort. Nevertheless, it’s good that there are at least some ideas, and we should ensure that it’s something that does get discussed during the election.