Economy Thread

[Wharn]

Does God have some sort of vendetta against this city? Latest round of job losses, updated yesterday: http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2...-18330211.html

[Simpseatles]

Originally Posted by Wharn

Does God have some sort of vendetta against this city? Latest round of job losses, updated yesterday: http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2...-18330211.html

Aw man, that really sucks.

All of this is happening just as I was starting to have a renewed sense of optimism for this city, with the direction Fontana is taking.

[Kokkei Mizu]

Originally Posted by Simpseatles

Aw man, that really sucks.

All of this is happening just as I was starting to have a renewed sense of optimism for this city, with the direction Fontana is taking.

I still have optimism for the city.

- Two major residential high-rises are being built near the core
- Fanshawe will most likely start building their new downtown campus in the fall
- That frozen pizza factory is going to be built, I'm pretty sure, which will add 500 jobs to the city, plus factories being built in the rest of that industrial park
- The Wonderland Rd interchange, which will spur more industrial development in the west part of the London.
- Diamond Aircraft might pull through with private funding, bringing hundreds of people back to work, and creating hundreds of jobs as well

Plus other projects, I think the city is still on a steady track up. A few job losses will happen, but I think we will be rewarded by lots of new factories in the east and west, and new businesses downtown in the next 10 years.

[manny_santos]

I'm not sure what to think about where London is heading. I can't see it ever being a major player in the Canadian economy, but with Joe Fontana in the Mayor's chair, I have some optimism for it being a major player in OOT (Ontario Outside Toronto). Time will tell.

[haljackey]

Problem is because other Canadian cities are doing so well London's getting a bad rap.

Thing is through thick and thin, London will eventually pull through with a little positive energy. It's a stable place in an unstable world. That simply isn't the case with most other cities. (Economically speaking, of course.)

[ssiguy]

That's bad news but London will continue to prosper.
Could be worse..............you could be out here in Vancouver where unemployment is 8% but wages are lower and a house costs 6 times as much.

[ForestryW]

Originally Posted by haljackey

Problem is because other Canadian cities are doing so well London's getting a bad rap.

Thing is through thick and thin, London will eventually pull through with a little positive energy. It's a stable place in an unstable world. That simply isn't the case with most other cities. (Economically speaking, of course.)

Mmmm...I think the real problem is education. London needs to attract a more educated workforce because the jobs of the future won't be at factories and call centres. They'll be high tech and medicine-related.

[haljackey]

Originally Posted by van Hemessen

Mmmm...I think the real problem is education. London needs to attract a more educated workforce because the jobs of the future won't be at factories and call centres. They'll be high tech and medicine-related.

At this point a job is a job. I agree that there's a need to diversify the workforce, but London's already pretty diversified.

If one sector of the economy is hit (for example, manufacturing), it won't have a 'significant' impact on London's economy compared to other cities that rely heavily on particular economic sectors. (Just look at Windsor/Detroit or the news out of RIM in Kitchener-Waterloo.)

Adding better, high-tech jobs is a goal for any city, and London's trying to do it. The problem is every city wants it and there's only so many jobs to go around.

In the end I hope London will pull out of this funk bruised, but not broken. It will take time to heal this city back to what it was, but it will recover.

[ldoto]

London's Tourism Industry on the Mend

7/4/2011


According to a report by the Canadian Tourism Research Institute, visitors spent just over $490-million last year.

That represents an increase of 3.2% over the previous year.

The report shows the largest portion of spending in London was attributed to spending on food and beverage, which totaled $173-million.

Prior to the recession, local tourism was generating is excess of 500 million dollars.

General Manager of Tourism London John Winston believes the city's summer festivals will be packed with more and more families choosing a summer stay-cation.

"We're seeing a lot more Ontarians staying in Ontario to do their vacationing. Close to 87% of all visitations to the city and to the Province in general come from the Province. Our biggest concern is what's happening in the United States. There's still a lot of economic uncertainty there."

The report also indicates just over 63-hundred jobs were supported within London by tourism spending.

[MolsonExport]

I do my bit by taking the family to most of the festivals...and to the covent garden market in winter. But fark, there is not a whole lot to do around these parts come bad weather. Everybody goes to Costco.

[haljackey]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I do my bit by taking the family to most of the festivals...and to the covent garden market in winter. But fark, there is not a whole lot to do around these parts come bad weather. Everybody goes to Costco.

Did it on a rainy Saturday a couple weeks ago. Never Again.

[MolsonExport]

Costco on a rainy weekend is hades.

[Wharn]

Tourism industry? Didn't know we had one. I met a Japanese couple in first year University, they were apparently stopping in for a few hours because they thought it was entertaining to have a city named London. I just assumed most other tourists wandered in for that very reason.

[ForestryW]

Originally Posted by Wharn

Tourism industry? Didn't know we had one. I met a Japanese couple in first year University, they were apparently stopping in for a few hours because they thought it was entertaining to have a city named London. I just assumed most other tourists wandered in for that very reason.

Actually I've known quite a few international students in Waterloo who wanted to visit London because they've heard good things about it. It's cosmopolitan and has interesting bars and restaurants (which it does compared to K-W).

The problem is that it isn't very accessible to tourists. Let's face it, most tourists use Toronto as their home base and the only way to get to London from Toronto is either VIA or Greyhound. But the bus and train schedules are so sparse that London is basically out of the question for a day trip (there's no reason to take a 2 hour bus ride to London to stay 3 hours and have a 2 hour bus ride back).

[Kokkei Mizu]

Originally Posted by van Hemessen

Actually I've known quite a few international students in Waterloo who wanted to visit London because they've heard good things about it. It's cosmopolitan and has interesting bars and restaurants (which it does compared to K-W).

The problem is that it isn't very accessible to tourists. Let's face it, most tourists use Toronto as their home base and the only way to get to London from Toronto is either VIA or Greyhound. But the bus and train schedules are so sparse that London is basically out of the question for a day trip (there's no reason to take a 2 hour bus ride to London to stay 3 hours and have a 2 hour bus ride back).

Yeah. The VIA schedules are designed so people is smaller cities/towns can have a night out in Toronto. The latest VIA trains are from Toronto to London, not the other way around.

[Highinthesky]

Not that this is an indication of the overall economy but all the factory and warehouse job loses hasn't impacted the downtown Condo market much. There have been 15 sales of 1 bedroom condos in downtown since January 2011 and the average sale price is $194,723. Encouraging news for anyone who has purchased within the past couple of years.

[MolsonExport]

London Free Press, front page July 13, 2011.

It is official. London is cursed.

10,000 jobs lost; 10,000 jobs promised


London's one-year job death toll -- comparing last month to June 2010 -- is a stark reminder of the hurdle facing Mayor Joe Fontana, who swept into office promising to deliver exactly the same number of jobs over four years.

By Patrick Maloney, The London Free Press

An audacious promise carried Joe Fontana to city hall last year.

A stunning new snapshot of London’s employment reality makes the challenge of fulfilling it look all the more daunting.

But the mayor, who promised to create 10,000 jobs if elected, is shaking off startling new statistics that show London has lost exactly that number — 10,000 jobs — over the past 12 months.

“I remain very, very optimistic, but we need to work even harder,” Fontana said Tuesday. “We’re going to need at least 10,000 jobs, if not more, to keep pace.”

The newly released Statistics Canada numbers are unsettling.

In June 2010, the London census metropolitan area, which takes in St. Thomas, had 250,500 in its labour force. Last month — exactly one year later — that number had dropped to 240,500.

About 9,400 have also stopped looking for work, Statistics Canada says.

There may be some overlap between those two numbers, the agency says.

With London’s unemployment rate at 8.7%, up from 8.3% in May, the picture looks bleak — though Statistics Canada suggests there’s evidence things have levelled off:

Since December, when, coincidentally, Fontana and the new council took over, London’s labour force has held steady — and was up by 100 as of June.

The 10,000-job decline happened mainly in the second half of 2010.
...
Read more here: http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2.../18410246.html

[haljackey]

What startles me in this report is that Windsor's unemployment rate has gone down considerably (from 12-9%) whereas London's figures continue to rise.

There's numerous things to blame for this, such as the imbalance of government stimulus investment. Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton got a lot more than us.

It's almost as if this region's been taken off the radar. Governments need to acknowledge the fact that we're here and, more importantly, that we need help. London has done a good job weathering the recession, but it can only last so long and take so much abuse on it's own.

[Highinthesky]

The article seems to suggest that things have already leveled off on there own and that growth prospects for the next year are good. If this is true I'd say hold off on the stimulous as I've paid enough taxes already.

[manny_santos]

It's official, we're getting the Dr. Oetker pizza plant.

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2.../18470646.html

Just like Mama used to make.