Unemployment rate steady in April
Posted May 8, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Analysis, Economy
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Last month, I wrote an article about the increasing unemployment rate, and also to watch out for the May 8th labour force survey.
Statistics BC released their monthly update of the labour force numbers today. Here is a copy.
The take-home message here is that the numbers are almost perfect for neither party to take any sort of “credit” – the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is steady at 7.4%, while the seasonally adjusted employment rate increased from 60.8% to 61.2%, and a mild increase in the participation rate (from 65.7% to 66.0%).
In other words, this month of data is more or less identical to the previous month, which means that it is electorally insignificant. You can be sure that the NDP would be screaming murder if the unemployment rate continued to rise, or the BC Liberal party would claim “We created jobs that the NDP would destroy!” if the unemployment rate decreased. This release gives neither party any ammunition with respect to this.