Image Credit: CP
May 10, 2013 - 3:04 PM
May 10, 2013 - 9:54 AM
VANCOUVER - Statistics Canada says British Columbia's jobless rate dropped six-tenths of a point in April to 6.4 per cent, but with just four days remaining in the provincial election campaign, those numbers mean different things to different parties.
B.C. Liberals, campaigning on a jobs and economic growth platform, quickly issued a news release from Finance Minister Mike de Jong, saying the latest employment figures reveal the benefit of strong leadership and the risk of changing course when a program is working.
But April's jobless rate remains higher than the 6.3 per cent setting in February and NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston attributes the month-to-month dip to people abandoning the search for work.
Ralston also says the province lost nearly 11,000 private sector jobs, while Statistics Canada analyst Vince Ferrao confirms most newly-created jobs were in the service sector, such as finance, health care and social assistance.
Ferrao says few positions were created in B.C.'s resource-based industries in April.
De Jong says B.C. was second only to Alberta in job creation last month, but Ralston says more than 45,000 private sector posts have vanished since the Liberals launched their Jobs Plan in 2011, proving the scheme is an abject failure. (The Canadian Press, CKNW)
News from © The Canadian Press, 2013