TORONTO, Feb. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Despite strong job-creation numbers in the Greater Toronto Area and to a lesser extent Ottawa, many cities and rural areas outside these two large regions have experienced little or no job growth over the past decade. So finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“In terms of job-creation, Ontario’s post-recession recovery has been markedly uneven, with the largest urban centres regaining lost ground more quickly while much of the rest of the province continues to struggle,” said Ben Eisen, Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of Uneven Recovery: Job Creation in Ontario’s Urban Centres between 2008 and 2018.
For example, from 2008-2018 (the latest year of comparable data), total employment growth was 17.3 per cent in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and 9.7 per cent in Ottawa—compared to 1.9 per cent in the rest of the province.
Consequently, during the same time period, 90.8 per cent of all net job-creation in Ontario occurred in the GTA and Ottawa—compared to 9.2 per cent in the rest of the province.
“Rural Ontario, and cities other than Toronto and Ottawa, comprise a large chunk of the province’s workforce, so poor employment growth in these areas is a serious problem for Ontario and indeed the country,” Eisen said.
“The economic reality in Toronto and Ottawa is much different than in places such as London, Sudbury, Peterborough and Thunder Bay.”
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Ben Eisen, Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
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The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org