| It's a trend that has been reinforced in each month's jobless report and hit home last week when Chrysler Canada revealed it would chop an Ontario assembly shift, putting another 1,100 workers out of a job in the province's battered manufacturing sector.
Despite impressive job growth and the lowest unemployment rate in more than three decades, Canada's booming economy is firing on only five of six cylinders. Yet, it's still delivering enough horsepower to push the unemployment rate down to 5.8 per cent and the loonie to record highs.
However, the prospects are for much more difficult times ahead as the earnings squeeze in Corporate Canada puts downward pressure on private sector job growth into 2008.
In recent years, the energy, resources and services sectors have been on fire, especially in the oil-rich West, where high demand is driving up wages and income. Yet, layoffs are starting in the the natural gas sector because of low prices and weakened drilling numbers.
Meanwhile, manufacturing remains under siege, especially in automotive, forestry and textiles industries. The pain that began with restructuring in the auto sector and slumping demand in U.S. housing, has worsened because the soaring loonie is squeezing exports significantly.
Blue-collar unions call for government support and an industrial policy to deal with the erosion in manufacturing, but the economic shift in Canada mirrors changes in all western industrial countries, as their economies move towards services and goods production shifts to low-wage countries in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.
In Canada, that shift has been painful in Ontario and Quebec's manufacturing sector, but appears to be offset by a boom in jobs in energy, mining, financial services, health care and education. |
