Hamilton's economy?

[thistleclub]

Hamilton CMA data visualizations courtesy CREA/RAHB:

[Pearlstreet]

I know many may ask the same question; what are your predictions for Hamilton's growth, economy and housing market after the rush of Pan Am games?

I feel a little cooling off happening, but looking forward to hear of new projects continuing after then, like the second phase of the new train station predicted to start. Obviously we can all enjoy the completion of the number of new current projects, I just hope the momentim keeps up.

[SteelTown]

Hopefully soon after the Pan Am we get the B-Line built.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

Is your implication that this burst of development we've seen of late is related to the Pan Am games? I can't imagine that's the case. Or are you simply using the date - 2015 - as a benchmark?

Re. B-line LRT

I've given up on that. There's no political will in Hamilton to do what has to be done in that regard. The best we can hope for is dedicated bus lanes, bike lanes and a return to two-way traffic in the core.

I hate being cynical but being a born and bred Hamiltonian, I can't really help it.

[SteelTown]

From now and until after the Games Hamilton is guaranteed a certain amount of economic growth from the preparation for the Games.

So hopefully after 2015 there will be further growth along James St N as a result of all day GO Train. That and hopefully preparation for B-Line will commence.

I read a report last week said Hamilton is good for growth straight until 2017. Found it: http://www.thespec.com/news/business...gh-2017-report

[durandy]

When stupid Horwath can think of no better politics than attacking auto insurance rates and credit card rates, totally asinine policies, while vowing to block road tolls, the one chance we have of building any transit in this province...by the time we get to LRT the rest of the world will be on to something better.

[thistleclub]

Conference Board of Canada's Metropolitan Outlook 1: Economic Insights into 13 Canadian Metropolitan Economies: Winter 2013 carries a $2,795 price tag, and the Hamilton abstract is $850, so it's hard to get much in the way of meat -- but the teaser material does give us some local info:

"Hamilton’s economy is forecast to grow by 2.3 per cent in 2013, and a similar annual rate of growth is forecast in subsequent years. The manufacturing sector has diversified of late. For example, Maple Leaf is building a new food processing plant, which will increase the importance of food manufacturing in Hamilton’s economy."

Predicted economic growth for 11 Ontario CMAs studied (in terms of 2013 GDP Rate percentage change):

Toronto CMA: 2.8%
Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo CMA: 2.7%
Oshawa CMA: 2.6%
Windsor CMA: 2.4%
Hamilton CMA: 2.3%
Ontario Average: 2.1%
London CMA: 1.9%
Thunder Bay CMA: 1.8%
Kingston CMA: 1.7%
Sudbury CMA: 1.7%
St. Catharines-Niagara CMA: 1.4%
Ottawa-Gatineau CMA: 1.3%

[mattgrande]

Originally Posted by durandy

When stupid Horwath can think of no better politics than attacking auto insurance rates and credit card rates, totally asinine policies, while vowing to block road tolls, the one chance we have of building any transit in this province...by the time we get to LRT the rest of the world will be on to something better.

Ontario provincial politics has me depressed... On the other side, you've got Hudack essentially saying "I'm taking my ball and going home" to the budget... there's no good options...

[bigguy1231]

Originally Posted by durandy

When stupid Horwath can think of no better politics than attacking auto insurance rates and credit card rates, totally asinine policies, while vowing to block road tolls, the one chance we have of building any transit in this province...by the time we get to LRT the rest of the world will be on to something better.

If you haven't figured it out already, LRT has been put on the backburner in this city. As soon as council found out it was going to cost the taxpayers of this city to build and operate it it became a dead issue. The idea of rendering King St. useless also played a role. As for road tolls, any party that does it will be turfed from office never to be elected again. Adding to drivers expenses is political suicide.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

Originally Posted by bigguy1231

As for road tolls, any party that does it will be turfed from office never to be elected again. Adding to drivers expenses is political suicide.

Only in politically backward places like Hamilton and Ontario and, well, Canada in general; so yeah, I'd have to agree with you on that one.

[thistleclub]

Half of GTA and Hamilton workers in ‘precarious’ jobs
(Toronto Star, Laurie Monsebraaten, Feb 23 2013)

Barely half of working adults in the GTA and Hamilton have full-time jobs with benefits and expect to be working for their current employer a year from now, according to a groundbreaking report on precarious work and household well-being.

The other half are working either full- or part-time with no benefits or no job security, or in temporary, contract or casual positions, says the report by McMaster University and United Way Toronto released Saturday.

It notes that “precarious” or insecure work in the region has increased by 50 per cent in the past 20 years and is impacting everything from people’s decision to form relationships, have children and volunteer in their community.

The economic fallout is likely also far-reaching, it warns. One of the report’s most startling findings is that up to half of insecure workers are living in middle-income households earning between $50,000 and $100,000, says one of the report’s lead researchers.

“We know that precarious work arrangements are common in low-income households,” said McMaster University labour and economics professor Wayne Lewchuk. “What we didn’t expect to see was how much precarious work has crept into middle-income households,” he said. “The impact is even being felt in upper-income levels.”

These “stressed-out” middle-income workers are often found in universities and colleges as contract lecturers and research assistants, in hospitals and government as contract nurses and office staff, and in non-profit agencies where those on the front lines rely on time-limited grants to pay their wages....

The report, which surveyed 4,000 working adults between the ages of 25 and 65 and conducted in-depth interviews with 100 of them, is part of a five-year, $1-million research project on precarious employment in southern Ontario, funded by the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Among working adults, aged 26-65:

Permanent Full-Time Employment
GTAH Region: 50.3%
City of Toronto: 49.4%
Hamilton: 47.1%
Halton: 57.5%
Peel: 52.8%
York: 48%

Permanent Part-Time Employment
GTAH Region: 8.8%
City of Toronto: 9.0%
Hamilton: 12.3%
Halton: 8.0%
Peel: 8.0%
York: 7.1%

Precarious Employment
GTAH Region: 18.4%
City of Toronto: 19.4%
Hamilton: 15.2%
Halton: 18.0%
Peel: 17.0%
York: 21.0%

Precarious Employment Subcategories

Temporary Employment
GTAH Region: 9.9%
City of Toronto: 9.9%
Hamilton: 7.6%
Halton: 6.7%
Peel: 10.5%
York: 14.1%

Self-Employed, No Employees
GTAH Region: 8.5%
City of Toronto: 9.5%
Hamilton: 7.6%
Halton: 11.3%
Peel: 6.5%
York: 6.9%

Other Employment
GTAH Region: 22.5%
City of Toronto: 22.2%
Hamilton: 25.4%
Halton: 16.5%
Peel: 22.2%
York: 23.9%

[realcity]

Hamilton is the champ at "Other Employment" ie Artists

[Jon Dalton]

Originally Posted by bigguy1231

If you haven't figured it out already, LRT has been put on the backburner in this city. As soon as council found out it was going to cost the taxpayers of this city to build and operate it it became a dead issue.

Council still supports LRT, as they have voted to reaffirm their commitment with the province.

The idea of rendering King St. useless also played a role.

That's only slightly hyperbolic. Even if we accept your assertion that the only legitimate use of a road is to carry single occupant vehicles and that high capacity transit does not actually transport people but is actually a waste of space, King Street is 4 lanes wide. Most people and certainly most of council has already accepted that LRT on any street is not death to cars.

As for road tolls, any party that does it will be turfed from office never to be elected again. Adding to drivers expenses is political suicide.

I am forced to agree there, but sooner or later reality will catch up to politics. Opposing road tolls will only take you so far but once you are elected people will expect actual solutions. When it comes to reducing congestion, nothing works like road tolls.

[bigguy1231]

Originally Posted by Jon Dalton

Council still supports LRT, as they have voted to reaffirm their commitment with the province.

They voted to appease the pro LRT people.

Originally Posted by Jon Dalton

That's only slightly hyperbolic. Even if we accept your assertion that the only legitimate use of a road is to carry single occupant vehicles and that high capacity transit does not actually transport people but is actually a waste of space, King Street is 4 lanes wide. Most people and certainly most of council has already accepted that LRT on any street is not death to cars.

We can't get people to use buses in this city, what makes anyone think they are going to use streetcars that won't get them to where they are going any faster than they can get there now. Creating congestion where it doesn't exist to justify the building of LRT will only turn people against the idea.

Originally Posted by Jon Dalton

I am forced to agree there, but sooner or later reality will catch up to politics. Opposing road tolls will only take you so far but once you are elected people will expect actual solutions. When it comes to reducing congestion, nothing works like road tolls.

We don't have congestion in this city. What we do have is a good arterial road system that works, like it or not. I'm not really too concerned with the traffic problems of the GTA. The problem is of their own creation.

[Jon Dalton]

We can't get people to use buses in this city

That is valid as an opinion, but one of the crucial facts in the LRT issue is that the B-line corridor already has enough bus ridership to justify a light rail line. Only now, that ridership is spread over several routes that use the corridor, on buses that are often over capacity. LRT does attract new transit users as evidenced in every city that uses it, but this is not a 'build it and they will come' scenario - the ridership is already there.

We do have ample arterial roads and the dedication of 2 lanes to transit will not change that. We are talking about making one street more useful for transit, with a slight detriment to vehicular traffic speed on that one street. Those who need to drive across town quickly may still choose from any of the other streets that exist and will not have LRT on them. It isn't reasonable to suggest that a transformational improvement in transit efficiency is not worth even a slight reduction in motoring speed on one street

[thistleclub]

Originally Posted by Jon Dalton

That is valid as an opinion, but one of the crucial facts in the LRT issue is that the B-line corridor already has enough bus ridership to justify a light rail line.

LRT will motivate us to ditch cars: HSR chief
(Hamilton Spectator, Meredith Macleod, Feb 2 2010)

The B-Line from Eastgate Square to McMaster University -- the city's proposed corridor for a light rail line -- affects four of the HSR's major routes, Hull says. Collectively, they account for about 50 per cent of the system's riders. That adds up to 25,000 to 30,000 trips a day, half or more in peak periods. Hull says that's not far off the usage that would be hoped for on an LRT line. In fact, a consultants' report into the economics of LRT in Hamilton projected the system would need about 34,000 riders a weekday (8.9 million a year) to break even on its operational costs.


The breakdown of farebox recovery ratios on page 48 of 2010's HSR Operational Review shows that two of these these routes (1 King & 51 University) also come the closest to fare recovery.

[thistleclub]

Hamilton jobless rate hits new low of 5.7 per cent
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, Mar 8 2013)

Hamilton’s unemployment rate has sunk to a new low. Figures released by Statistics Canada this morning show the Hamilton-Burlington-Grimsby area has a jobless rate of 5.7 per cent – the lowest the rate has been in the last year and lower than before the recession of 2008-9. The regular Labour Force Survey report shows the area posted an average unemployment rate of 6.1 per cent for 2008 and peaked at 8.4 per cent in 2009 as the American-led recession deepened. Since then, unemployment in Hamilton has fallen in each of the next three years.

What appears to be good news is dulled a little by digging deeper into the StatsCan report. It shows the number of working age people in the region actually participating in the workforce is lower than it was in 2008, while the both the population and labour force have increased. In 2008, 66.6 per cent of a workforce of 397,500 was participating in the labour force. For 2012 the rate was 65.3 per cent of 408,000. Both the number of people employed and unemployed also increased between the years. Since unemployment rates only count people who are actively looking for work, those figures mean more Hamilton-area people of working age have given up the hunt for a job.

[thistleclub]

Slept on and chewed over.

Fewer good jobs for fewer workers
(Hamilton Spectator, Steve Arnold, Mar 9 2013)

Hamilton's unemployment rate has sunk to a new low, but that's not good news. Figures released by Statistics Canada Friday show the Hamilton-Burlington-Grimsby area has a jobless rate of 5.7 per cent — the lowest in the last year and lower than before the recession of 2008-09.

The troubling part, however, is declines in other key figures: the number of people employed along with the total labour force. Those declined despite a rise in the population.

“It's not good news when unemployment is falling because people are leaving the workforce,” said economist Erin Weir, president of the Progressive Economics Forum. “Reductions in the participation rate and the labour force are not good news.”

The StatsCan numbers show that from February 2012 to last month the Hamilton area's population grew by 6,100 people to 628,000. The labour force, however, shrank by 7,600. At the same time the number of people employed fell by 4,300 and the number unemployed dropped by 2,200.

Those figures meant the participation rate — the number of working age people actually in the labour force — fell from 67.5 per cent to 65.6 per cent. At the same time the unemployment rate fell because it only counts people who are actively looking for work….

The latest federal figures show that over the last year the area has lost 5,200 good-paying positions in manufacturing and 400 in health care. They've been replaced with 8,800 lower-paid positions in accommodation and food service and 5,500 transportation and warehousing sector jobs.

One of the bright spots in the report is the gain of 1,700 jobs in the professional and scientific field.

Another glimmer can be seen in the fact the area's unemployment rate is now slightly lower than the 6.1 per cent average through 2008, just before the American-led recession. The jobless rate peaked at 8.4 per cent in 2009 but has fallen every year since to an average of 6.5 per cent in 2012.

During that same period, the Hamilton area's workforce has grown from 397,500 in 2008 to 408,000 last year but the participation rate has fallen from 66.6 per cent to 65.3 per cent.

Neil Everson, director of the city's economic development department, urged some caution in reading the Statistics Canada figures, noting they are based on a survey rather than an actual head count.

Hamilton's longer term outlook, he said, is brighter as new jobs flow into some of the new factory and office space currently under construction.

The city has issued record numbers of building permits in the last two years and it normally takes up to two years for the tax and employment benefits of new construction to be felt.

[CaptainKirk]

I'd like to see numbers on the work age people who have left the workforce and have some stats put them into some context.

[thistleclub]

Labour force characteristics, February 2012 to February 2013:

LABOUR FORCE

Seasonally Adjusted, 3 Month Moving Average

Toronto: +137,800
Ottawa: +10,100
Barrie: +10,100
London: +4,500
St. Catharines-Niagara: +3,400
Brantford: +2,300
Greater Sudbury: +1,500
Oshawa: +200
Windsor: -100
Kingston: -2,700
Thunder Bay: -2,900
Guelph: -4,400
Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo: -4,500
Hamilton: -7,600
Peterborough: -13,900

Unadjusted, 3 Month Moving Average

Toronto: +141,900
Barrie: +10,600
Ottawa: +9,500
London: +4,900
St. Catharines-Niagara: +2,700
Greater Sudbury: +1,800
Windsor: +500
Oshawa: -1,200
Kingston: -1,200
Thunder Bay: -2,300
Brantford: -2,500
Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo: -3,000
Hamilton: -4,000
Guelph: -4,100
Peterborough: -13,900


PARTICIPATION RATE

Seasonally Adjusted, 3 Month Moving Average

Barrie: 75.2%
Ottawa: 72.7%
Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo: 71.1%
Guelph: 70.1%
Oshawa: 68.9%
Toronto: 68.0%
Brantford: 67.9%
Hamilton: 65.6%
Greater Sudbury: 64.9%
London: 64.8%
Kingston: 64.3%
St. Catharines-Niagara: 64.1%
Thunder Bay: 62.3%
Windsor: 61.7%
Peterborough: 53.9%

Unadjusted, 3 Month Moving Average

Barrie: 74.6%
Ottawa: 71.6%
Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo: 71.1%
Guelph: 68.8%
Oshawa: 68.1%
Toronto: 67.3%
Brantford: 66.4%
Hamilton: 65.4%
Kingston: 64.2%
Greater Sudbury: 63.8%
London: 63.7%
St. Catharines-Niagara: 63.1%
Thunder Bay: 62.6%
Windsor: 61.3%
Peterborough: 53.9%