Hamilton's economy?

[drpgq]

This article from the Vancouver Sun has the unemployment rate breakdown by city.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business...448/story.html

Check out the Ontario cities:

— Ottawa 6.1 (6.3)

— Kingston, Ont. 6.7 (7.0)

— Peterborough, Ont. 9.9 (9.8)

— Oshawa, Ont. 9.4 (9.6)

— Toronto 8.4 (8.2)

— Hamilton, Ont. 5.7 (5.8)

— St. Catharines-Niagara, Ont. 7.1 (7.1)

— Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Ont. 7.5 (6.9)

— Brantford, Ont. 7.7 (7.8)

— Guelph, Ont. 5.8 (6.2)

— London, Ont. 9.1 (8.5)

— Windsor, Ont. 9.2 (9.7)

— Barrie, Ont. 7.0 (7.3)

— Sudbury, Ont. 8.1 (7.4)

— Thunder Bay, Ont. 5.9 (5.0)

Looks like Hamilton has the lowest rate.

[thistleclub]

Another angle on unemployment numbers:

EMPLOYMENT RATE

Seasonally Adjusted, 3 Month Moving Average
CMA: Feb 2013 Rate (Jan 2013 Rate)

Barrie: 70.0% (67.8%)
Ottawa: 68.3% (68.6%)
Guelph: 66.5% (66.2%)
Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge: 66.3% (66.1%)
Brantford: 62.7% (62.0%)
Oshawa: 62.4% (62.3%)
Toronto: 62.3% (62.4%)
Hamilton: 61.9% (61.2%)
Kingston: 60.0% (59.9%)
Greater Sudbury: 59.6% (59.7%)
St. Catharines-Niagara: 59.5% (59.3%)
London: 58.9% (59.2%)
Thunder Bay: 58.6% (58.4%)
Windsor: 56.0% (55.9%)
Peterborough: 48.6% (49.2%)

Unadjusted, 3 Month Moving Average
CMA: Feb 2013 Rate (Feb 2012 Rate)

Barrie: 69.4% (62.8%)
Ottawa: 67.6% (67.7%)
Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge: 65.8% (67.9%)
Guelph: 64.7% (69.5%)
Toronto: 62.0% (60.4%)
Oshawa: 61.9% (64.5%)
Hamilton: 61.8% (62.6%)
Brantford: 61.2% (59.0%)
Kingston: 60.1% (61.3%)
Greater Sudbury: 59.6% (59.7%)
St. Catharines-Niagara: 58.0% (57.2%)
London: 58.3% (57.9%)
Thunder Bay: 59.3% (61.7%)
Windsor: 55.3% (54.8%)
Peterborough: 48.6% (62.7%)

[drpgq]

Looking at both rates, Peterborough is really hurting. What's up with that? Some massive layoff I missed?

[block43]

I think Peterborough is a student/retirement town.

[SteelTown]

Encouraging hiring climate in Hamilton
Rick Zamperin
3/12/2013

http://www.900chml.com/Channels/Reg/...spx?ID=1909472

Hamilton employers are offering an encouraging view on our city's hiring climate.

The latest survey by Manpower Canada shows 23 per cent of local employers plan to hire for the upcoming quarter.

Zero per cent anticipate cutbacks.

73 per cent of employers plan to maintain their current staffing levels, while 4 per cent are unsure of their hiring intentions for the upcoming quarter.

Nationally, just 20 per cent of employers plan to hire workers during the April to June period.

[thistleclub]

Manpower PR:

Respectable Hiring Climate Expected for Hamilton

Hamilton area employers expect a respectable hiring climate for the second quarter of 2013, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey.

“Survey data reveals that 23 per cent of employers plan to hire for the upcoming quarter (April to June), while zero percent anticipate cutbacks,” stated Erica Melarangeli of Manpower’s Hamilton office. Another 73 per cent of employers plan to maintain their current staffing levels while four per cent of employers are unsure of their hiring intentions for the upcoming quarter.

“With seasonal variations removed from the data, Hamilton’s second quarter Net Employment Outlook of 18 per cent shows moderate decrease when compared to the previous quarterly Outlook of 24 per cent,” said Melarangeli. “It is also a ten percentage point increase from the Outlook reported during the same time last year indicating an upbeat hiring pace for the upcoming months.”

“Thanks in part to expected job gains from companies such as Walmart and Green Revolution EMS, the national hiring climate should remain upbeat,” said Byrne Luft, Vice President of Operations for Manpower Canada. “Employers in the Transportation & Public Utilities and Construction sectors anticipate the strongest gains in the upcoming quarter, especially in Western Canada. Additionally, we’re seeing that most of the new jobs created in Canada so far this year have been full-time positions. This continuing trend toward full-time employment is an encouraging sign.”


From Manpower Employment Outlook Survey Global Q2/2013:

“Employers from all 10 countries in the Americas report positive second-quarter hiring plans. Job prospects are strongest in Brazil and Panama and weakest in Costa Rica and the United States. Mexico’s Outlook remains upbeat and matches the strongest jobs forecast reported in the country since Q3 2008. Meanwhile, employers in Canada and the United States continue to expect steady job growth in the next three months and Outlooks in both countries remain relatively stable in both quarter-overquarter and year-over-year comparisons.”

The company's indices of Quarter-on-Quarter and Year-on-Year Movement (found on page 3) shows Canada dipping slightly in both measures.

[thistleclub]

Stats show Hamilton needs more workers
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, Mar 14 2013)

Brains, not bulk will be the secret to growing Hamilton’s economy in the future.

That warning is part of a new Conference Board of Canada study that warns Hamilton’s population isn’t growing fast enough, knocking out one of the three main engines for economic growth.

Without a growing number of new consumers and workers to drive the economy forward, the economic think tank says innovation and growing the stock of capital in Hamilton are the only ways to make the economy grow.

“Hamilton’s population just is not growing fast enough,” said Mario Lefebvre, director of the board’s Centre for Municipal Studies. “There is going to have to be a sense of urgency around that at some point.

“If communities want to maintain the economies they’ve come to expect something is going to have to be done about this,” he added.

The statistical picture painted by Lefebvre’s study is stark — he says metropolitan areas with population growth of 2 per cent a year can support economic expansion of around 3 per cent, a rate he calls “still very decent in today’s industrialized world.”

Hamilton’s average population growth between 2008 and 2012, however, was less than 1 per cent a year, just below the national average of 1.25 per cent.

“Hamilton isn’t in a catastrophic situation yet because you are still flirting with the national average, but your sense of urgency should certainly be rising,” Lefebrve said.

Statistics Canada figures show between February 2008 and last month the population of the Hamilton-Burlington-Grimsby area grew to 628,000 from 592,700. That’s growth of just over 5.9 per cent or an average of just over 1.1 per cent a year.

Looking ahead, the Conference Board and StatsCan predict the Hamilton area’s population will grow to 798,000 by 2017 — 4.3 per cent more than the forecast figure for 2013 or an average of 1 per cent a year.

The troubling figures, however, are the recent trend in the area’s labour force. According to Statistics Canada data the number of people in the prime working age years of 25-44 has fallen to 196,000 in 2012 from 208,200 in 2008, a drop of almost 6 per cent. During the same period, the number over age 65 rose 33.5 per cent to 123,500 from 92,500. The number in the early retirement age range of 55 to 64 rose almost 15 per cent to 94,600 from 82,400.

[thistleclub]

World Vision/Citizens for Public Justice PR:

New research paints discouraging picture of poverty in Hamilton

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. (Mar. 27, 2013)—Today, World Vision and Citizens for Public Justice released a joint report, Poverty at Your Doorstep, featuring detailed snapshots of poverty in five Canadian cities. According to the research, Hamilton is still working its way back from the 2008 recession with poverty rates remaining higher than the provincial averages.

"In the downtown community of Hamilton, there is no question that families are facing increased housing insecurity, inadequate employment and decreased income supports. But perhaps most seriously, with pressures everywhere, families are facing an attitudinal shift from people at large—a blaming, punitive attitude regarding their needs," says Mark Vander Vennen, Shalem Mental Health Network’s executive director.

“World Vision is on the frontlines of poverty in nearly 100 countries, yet we can’t ignore the situation in our own backyards. The gap between rich and poor is growing at an alarming rate and too many children in Hamilton still don’t have access to the same opportunities as other Canadians,” says Hugh Brewster, World Vision’s national manager of Canadian Programs.

“This report shows Canadians how much farther we need to go to end poverty. Citizens for Public Justice calls persistently for a life of dignity for all. An essential step in that direction is a federal poverty elimination plan that includes long-term solutions such as adequate housing, a fair taxation system and investment in social programs,” says Joe Gunn, executive director of Citizens for Public Justice.

Poverty in Hamilton
 The number of people turning to social assistance started to edge down in 2012, but still remains much higher than pre-recession levels.
 Food bank usage, which rose steeply after the recession, remains nearly 20 per cent above 2008 levels. Hamilton Food Share has documented a significant rise in the proportion of children using food banks over the past few years to 46 per cent in 2011.
 Average rent in Hamilton has steadily increased. Hamilton’s housing costs – historically one of the most affordable in Ontario – have become a problem, especially for low-income families.
 Hamilton’s child poverty rate increased sharply to 13 per cent in 2008, but fell back quickly in following years to five per cent.
 Hamilton’s unemployment rate has dropped to close to pre-recession levels. However, the recession of 2008-09 polarized the city’s labour market, creating economic instability for many families. The job market is now comprised of a larger share of low-wage service work.

[bigguy1231]

What they don't tell us about the poverty rate in this city is that it is about the same as every other larger city in this province give or take a percentage point. I am not saying this is good, but we have to put things in perspective. There will always be 20% of the population living in poverty, that's just the way it is,

[thistleclub]

Originally Posted by bigguy1231

What they don't tell us about the poverty rate in this city is that it is about the same as every other larger city in this province give or take a percentage point.

WV/CPJ's five-in-one report allows you to get a sense of how the various cities are performing. On both poverty and child poverty, Hamilton fares comparatively well -- the lowest poverty rate of the surveyed cities and a child poverty rate of 4% (half that of in Toronto, a third that of Vancouver, Winnipeg or Montreal).

[thistleclub]

Children make up half of all food bank users in Hamilton
(Hamilton Spectator, Joanna Frketich, Mar 27 2013)

Nearly half of Hamilton’s food bank users are children.

“It’s stark, really,” said Tom Cooper, director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction. “Kids are going hungry. There are enough kids in Hamilton (using the food bank) to fill 370 classrooms.”

Kids made up 46 per cent of those relying on Hamilton’s food banks in 2011. That’s a rise from 40 per cent in 2008, states a World Vision report on poverty released Wednesday.

“There is a major rise in the proportion of children using food banks,” said Hugh Brewster, national manager of Canadian programs at World Vision. “Hamilton historically has had low rental costs and that is beginning to change. It’s harder for families to find a suitable place to raise their children.”

The report found food bank use increased with housing costs....

At first glance, Hamilton seemed to fare better than the other cities. But a closer look at the report reveals a growing disparity between downtown and the suburbs — with poverty rates ranging from 6 to 40 per cent. Some lower central and east Hamilton neighbourhoods had child poverty rates of more than 60 per cent.

“If you average everything, Hamilton is an economically successful place,” said McMaster University epidemiologist Neil Johnston. “But you have an increasing gradient from the rich to the poor. That kind of disharmony is diminishing the quality of life in this city.”

[movingtohamilton]

The child poverty stats are shocking. This is terrible. No child should go hungry in this city.
I want to help, somehow. If any of you are active on this problem, please let me know how to plug in.

[thistleclub]

Poverty rates for children under age 6, from SPRC Hamilton/United Way Burlington-Greater Hamilton's Neighbourhood Profiles (March 2012):

Beasley: 76%
McQuesten: 75%
Keith: 69%
South Sherman: 57%
Landsdale: 49%
Jamesville: 49%
Riverdale: 49%
Rolston: 49%
Stinson: 48%
Quigley Road: 40%
Crown Point: 27%
City-Wide: 26%

If you're interested in volunteering, Mission Services or Hamilton Food Share are good places to start. You might also consider Hamilton Partners in Nutrition.

[movingtohamilton]

This data is shocking. What to do? It's like trying to hold back a tsunami with an umbrella.

[thistleclub]

City trading full-time work for part time
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, Apr 6, 2013)

Hamilton has lost a stunning 13,000 full-time jobs over the past year.

The latest Statistics Canada unemployment data, however, show the jobless rate for the area essentially unchanged because those positions were replaced by an equal number of part-time jobs.

For economist Erin Weir, of the United Steel Workers, that's a lousy trade.

“It's certainly bad news and you should be very troubled by it,” he said. “This shift from full-time to part-time employment is very much a negative trend.”

Hamilton's grim news was matched by the rest of the country where the Labour Force Survey concluded employment fell by 55,000 in March, compared to February. All of the losses were in full-time employment. The employment decline was actually worse than that — Weir noted the number of employees with positions paid by an employer actually fell by 93,100 in March but the full impact was offset by 38,700 more Canadians reporting self-employment.

Official unemployment would have increased even more, he added, but for 12,300 Canadians dropping out of the labour force altogether and consequently not being counted as unemployed.

“Hamilton certainly stands out in that shift away from full-time employment,” Weir added.

The Statistics Canada numbers show 384,600 people working in the Hamilton-Burlington-Grimsby area in March 2012 compared to 384,300 last month. The month-over-month change was sharper, however, showing a drop of 3,700 jobs.

Buried in those numbers is the breakdown between full- and part-time employment. Those figures show 312,700 full-time jobs in March last year and 299,800 last month, a drop of 12,900, or 4.1 per cent. The number of part-time workers in the area rose to 84,500, from 71,800, a gain of 12,700 — or almost 18 per cent.

The area's unemployment rate was 6.2 per cent compared to 6.4 per cent a year ago. In human terms, that means 25,600 unemployed people compared to 26,500 in March 2012.

Continued problems in the battered manufacturing sector account for part of the change. The Labour Force Survey shows employment in that sector shrank by 7,100 jobs, or 13.1 per cent, in the past year, falling from 54,200 positions to 47,100. The story was the same in the broader goods-producing sector where total employment fell 11.9 per cent to 80,900 jobs in March from 91,900 a year earlier.

Hamilton is gaining jobs in the services producing sector, largely in the segments where lower paid, part-time work is the standard.

[thistleclub]

Hamilton young workers among lowest paid in Ontario
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, Apr 30 2013)

Hamilton’s youngest workers are among the lowest paid in Ontario and a new study warns their predicament is not going to get any better.

A new study by the Social Planning and Research Council concludes median wages for workers in the 20-to-24 age group have fallen by almost half in the past 30 years and there’s no sign of that situation turning around.

Researcher Sarah Mayo blamed much of the decline on the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and rise of service sector employment and a growing lack of full-time work opportunities for young people.

“This data shows that major shifts in the labour market towards precarious work are having negative impacts on youth,” she said. “The reality of youth employment is very different than it was in the 1970s: many youth now face lower wages, fewer hours of work, decreasing access to permanent jobs and more time unemployed between contracts.”

The unemployment rate for that age group, 13.2 per cent in Hamilton, is also almost double the 6.8 per cent average for the general workforce....

The social planning research, the latest in a series of bulletins on the social effects of the last recession, reinforces some traditional ideas about employment. One is that more education increases your chances of getting a decent job, but even on this point Hamilton workers are at a disadvantage.

The research found median income for young workers in 2010 was only $27,300 in the Hamilton area compared to $35,200 in Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge. Since both communities have about the same proportion of workers with university degrees — 32 per cent — something other than education has to account for the difference. In addition, Hamilton workers remain generally less well-educated than those in other communities.

[thistleclub]

Building permit activity is charted in today's StatsCan Daily. Pairing the March numbers with starts data for January and February gives us:

Hamilton CMA

Jan 2013: $170.9 million
Jan 2013: $132.9 million
Jan 2012-Jan 2013: -22.2%

Feb 2012: $125.9 million
Feb 2013: $107.6 million
Feb 2012-Feb 2013: -14.5%

Mar 2012: $186.6 million
Mar 2013: $119.2 million
Mar 2012-Mar 2013: -36.1%

Q1 2012: $483.4 million
Q1 2013: $359.7 million
Q1 2012-Q2 2013: -25.6%

[thistleclub]

Latest Hamilton job numbers ‘look pretty ugly'
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, May 11 2013)

Hamilton lost more than 15,000 full-time jobs in the last year, but the area's unemployment rate barely moved as frustrated workers continued to drop out of the labour force.

Figures from Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey released Friday paint a depressing picture of the local job market for April compared to the same month in 2012: full-time positions fell by 15,600, total employment fell by 3,800, the available labour force dropped 3,300 and the number officially unemployed jumped by 500.

The loss of full-time jobs was partly offset by an increase of 11,900 part-time positions. The official unemployment rate for the area ticked up two-tenths of a percentage point to 6.5 per cent.

For economist Erin Weir of the United Steel Workers, that's an ugly picture.
"All of the main indicators are moving in the wrong direction," he said. "That looks pretty ugly to me."

….the labour force in the Hamilton Census Metropolitan Area, which includes Grimsby and Burlington, stood at 406,600 in April, down from 409,900 a year earlier. Of that total, 380,300 were employed, down from 384,100 in April 2012.

The number working full time fell to 295,100 from 310,700 while part-time employment rose to 85,200 from 73,300. The figures also show the participation rate — the portion of the population over age 15 actually in the labour force — slipped 1.2 percentage points to 64.6 per cent in April from 65.8 per cent a year earlier.

Marvin Ryder, of McMaster University's business school, said the local numbers point to a continued "very slow, nearly jobless recovery" from the recession rather than a collapse of local employment.

"It's very typical after a recession for companies to be slow in hiring if they're afraid the economy will slip back into recession," he said. "There's an issue of business confidence here because the corporate world is still not sure we're out of the woods."

[Dr Awesomesauce]

Broken record time, I know, but...

Saying yes to LRT and pushing to make in an actual part of the economy (i.e. including National Steelcar, Dofasco, etc.) would add some valuable jobs to the city. That's what Portland decided to do years ago and while I can't dredge up any employment numbers at the moment, it's done great things for their economy.

It's an idea. It's a good idea actually, but far too abstract and complicated for anyone at City Hall to even consider.

[thistleclub]

Unemployment numbers ‘very, very bad’
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Buist, June 27 2013)

The unemployment rate in Hamilton's inner city is nearly twice the provincial average and almost three times higher than the levels found in the city's suburbs, based on new figures released by Statistics Canada.

Nearly 15 per cent of the workforce in the area bounded by Queen Street, Main Street, Parkdale Avenue and the waterfront was unemployed at the time of the 2011 census, compared to 8.3 per cent unemployment in Ontario.

The unemployment rate in the core jumped by 50 per cent between the 2006 census and 2011.

There are three inner city neighbourhoods where the unemployment rates in 2011 were higher than 20 per cent.

In the area bounded by Sherman Avenue North, Cannon Street East, Gage Avenue North and the rail line north of Barton Street, the unemployment rate was just over 23 per cent. The two neighbourhoods next door — between Wentworth Street, Sherman Avenue, Main Street and the rail line — both had unemployment rates over 20 per cent....

The numbers are part of the latest release from the National Household Survey, the controversial replacement for the mandatory long form of the census that was traditionally used in the past to gather highly specific data about communities.

Because the National Household Survey was voluntary, Statistics Canada has cautioned that some of the data is not as reliable as previous years. Some of the data from smaller geographic units within cities, known as census tracts, has not been released because of poor response rates.

The latest release paints a disturbing picture of unemployment across the Hamilton metropolitan area.

Every community within the Hamilton area experienced an increase in unemployment between 2006 and 2011.

In the amalgamated city of Hamilton, unemployment jumped to 8.7 per cent from 6.5 per cent.

The rate rose to 5.8 per cent from 4.6 per cent in Burlington, and to 7.5 per cent from 4.8 per cent in Grimsby.

The sharpest increase in unemployment from the last census actually occurred in Dundas, where the rate climbed to 8.8 per cent in 2011 from 4.8 per cent in 2006.


Socioeconomic gaps appear to exist even within the most extreme census tracts. In the neighbourhood framed by Wentworth, Sherman, Cannon and the rail line, female unemployment is pegged at 10.6%, while male unemployment is purportedly a staggering 26.8%.

But the varying global non-response rates (GNR) between tracts make it impossible to get a definitive sense of the state of things. StatsCan notes: “A smaller GNR indicates a lower risk of non-response bias and as a result, lower risk of inaccuracy. The threshold used for estimates' suppression is a GNR of 50% or more.”

For example, here are the three census tracts cited in the story:

5370060: 23.2% unemployment, 40.9% GNR
5370051: 22.0% unemployment, 39.7% GNR
5370061: 20.2% unemployment, 44.3% GNR

And here are the four tracts that make up Downtown Hamilton:

5370048: 11.8% unemployment, 36.7% GNR
5370049: 9.6% unemployment, 37.7% GNR
5370037: 5.6% unemployment, 33.0% GNR
5370063: Data suppressed