The numbers don’t lie when it comes to one of Saskatchewan’s most important statistics.
They clearly confirm our worst suspicions that job creation has been lagging behind in rural Saskatchewan compared with the major cities.
In fairness to everyone - including Premier Brad Wall’s government, which is now bearing the brunt of the province’s economic downturn - jobs are lagging behind most everywhere in the province.
The most recent monthly job statistics of late confirm the unpleasant news… although the government of Saskatchewan doesn’t seem eager to admit it.
Gone are the staged news conferences and news releases pumping out monthly news on economic success during the halcyon days when the numbers were good.
Fortunately, the raw statistical data is still available. Unfortunately, the story it tells isn’t good.
During the first eight months of 2016, jobs in Saskatchewan (as a whole) were down 3,400 jobs.
That is a very sharp decline compared with the four-year period of 2011 to 2015 when Saskatchewan’s workforce grew by 37,900 jobs.
And that nearly 10,000-a-year job creation boom was actually slightly lower than from 2007 to 2011, which was a four-year period when this province enjoyed record job growth.
But the really telltale statistic isn’t the overall numbers, but the breakdown between new jobs in Regina and Saskatoon versus new jobs elsewhere in the province.
Again, job creation in the cities hasn’t exactly been what you call great as of late.
The two major cities have lost 500 jobs year-to-date in 2016.
Compared with the whopping 39,100 jobs created in Regina and Saskatoon from 2011 to 2015, that isn’t good news.
But the real story is in the lack of jobs in rural Saskatchewan, where people have felt a harder pinch for much longer.
Elsewhere in the province outside of Regina and Saskatoon, there has been a decline of 2,900 jobs in the first eight months of 2016.
Even more telling, however, is that there was a 2,100-job decline in that 2011 to 2015 period, much of it during a time when oil and potash prices were still solid enough and agriculture was doing relatively well.
The numbers are sobering when you consider that the latest projections offer very little indication that oil is about to recover any time soon, Also, this year’s crop - while of high volume - is generally of lower quality and competing with a bit of a worldwide glut.
But the maddening aspect for rural people doesn’t start and end there.
According to Doug Elliott - publisher of SaskTrends Monitor and likely the province’s foremost statistician - the comparative boom the two cities continued to enjoy from 2011 to 2015 was largely due to economic growth since 2011 in agriculture, mining and the oil patch.
It very much appears that Regina and Saskatoon accrued the bulk of the jobs for these activities that primarily took place in the country.
As illogical as this seems, it makes sense when you think about it.
There are good-paying jobs in oil and mining and profit to be made in farming when times are good.
But these tend to be among the first jobs to disappear when times go bad.
Where farmers, oil workers and miners tend to spend their money (both taxed and after-tax), however, is in the cities that enjoy the benefit of a service sector that grows even after good economic times.
Every job from the cashiers at Wal-Mart to the nurses and doctors hired in city hospitals to construction workers hired to build the Regina by-pass and the new stadium are the beneficiaries of the money still being made in these critical sectors.
As for others living and working right in rural Saskatchewan… well, news isn’t so good.
Of course, Premier Brad Wall’s government is doing everything it can to reverse this trend.
Whether it be his trip to Asia to help sell raw products or taking on David Suzuki on the carbon tax, a big part of the narrative is about how the government is addressing our core resource businesses.
But the reality is that no government can really control the job outcome, either in good times or bad.
Or so the numbers tell us.
