Statistics Canada delivered its last grade on the B.C. Jobs Plan before the election campaign begins, and it’s a fail.
But not to worry. According to the B.C. government, that’s “consistent with the national trend.”
This game gets played the first week of every month, when the labour-force survey is released. It’s a quick and dirty measure of employment across Canada.
The disclaimer warns that the numbers are “based on a sample, and subject to sampling variability.”
But the survey is still used as a report card on job creation. And since the B.C. Liberals’ Jobs Plan is the cornerstone of Premier Christy Clark’s government, it’s a handy guide to how it’s doing.
StatsCan found that in the last month, “employment was down 15,000, offsetting most of the increase in February.”
“Compared with 12 months earlier, employment in the province was little changed.”
After the jobs ministry gets its hands on the data, however, the picture changes.
Jobs Minister Pat Bell’s job is to wring any drop of good news out of the survey.
So a 15,000-job drop that pushed the unemployment rate up more than a half-point is read as being “consistent with the national trend.”
It’s the equivalent of boasting that we’re no sicker than any other patients on the ward.
And the ministry highlights the fact that a random assortment of towns all posted minor decreases in their unemployment rates. The ministry also reinterprets the “little change” verdict that StatsCan found over the year. It reaches back to August 2011 for a comparison and finds that B.C. is up 32,200 jobs since then, and therefore ranks fourth in job gains across Canada.
That’s a dubious claim that is wide open to interpretation, depending entirely on what date you decide on for the comparison.
Even if fourth place is accepted, it’s a bit of a comedown from the “first in Canada in job creation” claim that was being advertised last year. That didn’t last long. No matter how much they stretched for comparisons, Bell eventually conceded B.C. was third.
But the order of finish bounces wildly all over the place each month, so it’s hard to put much stake in it.
The ministry issued its own report card on the Jobs Plan on its first anniversary last September. Relying on the labour-force study, it tallied 52,000 jobs over the year ending August 2012, which was good enough for the first-place claim.
It lasted a month before they had to acknowledge an 11,000-job drop in October, a slight decline in November and almost no change in December.
There was a minor increase in January (1,800) and then a sizable gain in February, much of which was wiped out by the decline announced Friday.
While the jobs ministry desperately analyzes the data to magnify any and all good news, the Opposition goes through the same process in reverse, looking for the negative to project as much pessimism as possible.
The NDP boosts the latest count up to 23,000 lost jobs (by ignoring the growth in part-time jobs). By their count, B.C. is down 35,000 private-sector jobs since the Jobs Plan rolled out.
“B.C. is now worst of all provinces for private-sector job growth,” it says.
So the Liberals are juicing the employment numbers because a jobs plan needs to show jobs to be considered a success. And the NDP are subtracting jobs in order to portray the government as a failure.
The overall trend is: a good performance early last year that levelled off late last fall, although it’s still bouncing up and down from month to month. It seems to mirror the assessment of the economy in February’s budget — tentative, with no strong moves in any particular direction.
That doesn’t stop the advertising campaign from proceeding. The Jobs Plan blitz will apparently continue until the campaign starts — regardless of whether it’s working.
If you’re a Liberal, you’d call it stable and consistent. If you’re a New Democrat, it’s a stagnant failure. If the government changes next month, they’ll just trade their interpretation modes and carry on each month.
