CALGARY – The tale of two Canadian cities seems to have been turned on its head, with the unemployment rate in Calgary surpassing that of Windsor, Ont.
Statistics Canada job figures for February show an unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent in Calgary, the epicentre of the country’s oil wealth before the latest crude crash.
In Windsor, hit hard by the downturn in the automotive sector in recent years, the jobless rate was at 7.7 per cent last month.
Mike Moffatt, an economist at Western University in London, Ont., cautions the stark results from this month’s labour force survey in Windsor are likely an anomaly, since the sample size is so small.
But Moffatt says over the last 18 months or so, the economic situation has been gradually improving in Windsor.
For example, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced last month it hired 1,200 additional workers at its Windsor assembly plant, which has begun producing the new Pacifica minivan.