Does P.E.I. have a labour shortage? Or a job surplus?
CBC
P.E.I.'s unemployment rate rose in August as more Islanders entered the workforce, providing some relief for employers coping with an ongoing labour shortage.
The unemployment rate moved up to 7.3 per cent last month, still very low from a historical perspective but more than two percentage points higher than P.E.I.'s record low of 4.9 per cent in June.
The rate rose despite an increase in the number of jobs available, as more Islanders started looking for work.
That boost in potential job applicants should be welcome news for employers, who have been complaining about a shortage of workers since the spring of 2021, when the P.E.I. economy began to emerge from the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But a closer look at the numbers suggests the problem could be due to an excess of jobs rather than a true shortage of workers.
Since 2016, the workforce on P.E.I. has grown about 15 per cent. While that is strong growth, it hasn't kept up with the growth in the number of jobs, up almost 20 per cent.
"As an economist, I don't want to say there's too many jobs. We look at jobs as kind of a good thing," said economist Fred Bergman, a senior policy analyst at the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, or APEC.
"It's nice to be able to work and take care of your family and your household."
But P.E.I. may to some degree be a victim of its own success, said Bergman.
In 2015, then-premier Wade MacLauchlan launched a strategy to grow the province's population with an eye to blunting the impacts of P.E.I.'s aging demographic.
The strategy was based on the premise that P.E.I. had more older Islanders leaving the workforce than young ones entering it, and this would lead to a labour crunch. Most of the Western world shares the problem.
By encouraging immigrants and interprovincial migrants to settle in P.E.I., MacLauchlan's government hoped to boost the Island's population to 160,000 by this year.
It hit that target early, and by April of this year, P.E.I. had nearly 168,000 residents.
But rapid population growth comes with a cost.
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