Recession job recovery still lags: TD study

Although Canada as a whole has more than replaced the number of jobs lost during the recession, four provinces have yet to recoup all their job losses, TD Economics said in a report issued Thursday.

The analysis comes a day before Statistics Canada releases December's employment numbers.

Even if those show no change in employment from November, TD said, the country will still have created 264,000 net new jobs in 2010.

That made up for the jobs lost in the downturn and added 24,000 jobs on top of that.

But the TD study found employment in Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario has yet to return to pre-recession levels.

And five provinces — Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan — have yet to regain their full-time jobs lost.

The study also found job creation since the recession has been concentrated in part-time positions, the public and self-employed sectors, and lower-paying industries.

Newfoundland and Labrador led provinces in employment growth at 3.6 per cent while New Brunswick was the only one where unemployment contracted, by 0.7 per cent.

Assuming the December 2010 rates remain unchanged, the study found no province has returned to the unemployment rates before the downturn, in October 2008 (see table).

The unemployment rate doesn't reflect those who have given up looking for work and doesn't measure those who are underemployed.

"If we take both of these points into consideration, regional unemployment rates still have a ways to go before returning to pre-recessionary levels," the report said.

TD forecast gradual improvements in 2011, with the creation of 250,000 net new jobs.

It predicted the largest growth in employment will come in Alberta (2.3 per cent), British Columbia (2.1 per cent) and Saskatchewan (1.9 per cent).