Saskatchewan is the only province with three straight years of job losses
According to the latest employment numbers released by Statistics Canada, while the Sask. Party has been bringing in cruel and heartless cuts and unfair tax hikes, Saskatchewan has become the worst province in Canada for jobs. In fact, Saskatchewan is the only province that saw three straight years of negative job growth.
“Other provinces have invested in creating and protecting jobs while the Sask. Party has pushed ahead with their cruel and heartless cuts and massive tax hikes,” said NDP Jobs Critic Vicki Mowat. “It’s not hard to look across the country – including the rest of the Western provinces – and realize that it’s the Sask. Party’s mismanagement of the economy that is making it harder for Saskatchewan people to find and keep work.”
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Saskatchewan’s unemployment rate remained higher than the national average for the first time in over 40 years and, in 2017, the province's unemployment rate was the highest it has been in two decades. At the same time, there were 11,800 more jobs in Manitoba in December 2016 than a year earlier. In Alberta, there were nearly 55,000 more jobs and 74,000 more in BC.
Recent statistics also shows that 18,000 people from Saskatchewan left the province to find opportunity in just the first nine months of 2016. That’s 50 per cent more that left during the same time period ten years earlier.
“The lack of jobs is forcing more and more people to leave the province which only makes the problem worse,” Mowat said. “The Sask. Party’s bad management, cuts and unfair tax hikes are obviously not helping to create jobs. We need a government that understands the need to support our most vulnerable, to invest in the services we all rely on and to help Saskatchewan families make ends meet.”