Northern Economist Goes to Suid Afrika!

Well, I had the opportunity to attend the 2012 World Economic History Conference held in the Western Cape town of Stellenbosch in South Africa.  Stellenbosch is just outside of Capetown and is one of the oldest towns in South Africa dating back to 1679 and today is a university town of about 130,000 people situated in the heart of South African wine country.  My session at the WEHC was a reunion between researchers on 19^th and early 20^th wealth in the British Empire that was organized by David Green (King’s College, London) and included along with myself, Alastair Owens (Queen Mary University, London), Jim McAloon (Victoria University of Wellington), Martin Shanahan (University of South Australia) and Roy Hora (Universidad de San Andre).

My stay in Stellenbosch was at the Eendracht Hotel on tree-lined Dorp Street.  The Eendracht was originally a home that has been converted into an elegant hotel establishment with superb accommodation and service.  Indeed, my entire stay in South Africa was marked by excellent, friendly and attentive service.  It’s a long air trip there from Canada (Toronto to Capetown via a three hour layover Amsterdam was 23 hours) but well worth the experience you are going to have.  

 

South Africa and the Western Cape region is an incredibly beautiful and diverse land featuring vineyards, mountains and beaches.   From an economic perspective, it was remarkable how many economic activities were clustered in the small region that I had the opportunity to visit.   Orchards and farming, vineyards, fishing, mining, forestry, manufacturing, resource and food processing, education, health, tourism were all part of the economic base of activities making it a remarkably self-sufficient region and yet with a surprising range of exports not least of which is wine – try the unique South African blend of Pinotage.  The cultural wealth was also amazing in terms of the vast amounts of local art on display especially in some of the wineries.

South Africa is a land of diversity and extremes ranging from climate and terrain to its society, which is marked by great wealth as well as great inequality.  In terms of comparisons with my own home here in Northern Ontario, some of the social issues such as employment, educational opportunity and housing were reminiscent of challenges we have with First Nations though rooted in a different historical context.  The demographic balance between the descendants of European settlement and the indigenous populations are also quite different as the share of population originating from European settlement is much smaller than in Canada.

As well, there were other interesting comparisons such as the fact that while we have forest fires, the Western Cape region also has fires during their summer (I was visiting in winter which is cool and wet and more like autumn for someone from Canada).  As well, we tend to have to bear proof our garbage containers and camp sites in provincial parks while in South Africa the concern is with baboons who are also on the prowl for things to eat.   

South Africa was an impressive place.  It was a great trip.  I can’t wait to go again.

 


 

 

Thunder Bay's Employment Surge

Data from Statistics Canada on Thunder Bay's unemployment rate, employment and labour force suggest that its economy is experiencing a rebound after quite a few years of slow performance.  The most recent unemployment rate in Thunder Bay for May 2012 came in at 5.7 percent, which is well below the national and Ontario unemployment rates.  Of course, one of the reasons our unemployment rate is so low is that the labour force has not been growing as fast as employment but the last twelve months suggest that employment has actually begun to grow faster than the labour force.

Figure 1 shows unemployment rates (seasonally adjusted) for Canada, Ontario, Thunder Bay and Greater Sudbury for the 2009 to 2012 period on the left and total employment (seasonally adjusted)  for Thunder Bay over the same period on the right.  As can be seen, the period from June 2011 to January 2012 saw robust increases in employment followed by a decline since.  Overall, employment levels in Thunder Bay are the highest that they have been in the last three years.

Figure 1

The second figure shows annualized growth rates (May to May) for 2010, 2011 and 2012.  Thunder Bay's labour force actually shrank in both 2010 and 2011 but it grew substantially in 2012 - along with employment.  Employment in 2012 grew by 5.3 percent while the labour force grew by 3.8 percent.  As a result,  the unemployment rate dropped below 7 percent in 2011 and in 2012 has fallen below 6 percent.  However, the total level of employment in May 2012 is 61,500 - which is still down from the high of 67,400 reached in March 2003 but up from a low of 57,400 as recently as June 2011.

Thunder Bay's economy appears to have begun to recover from the forest sector collapse but still has ground to go.  Moreover, its employment still seems to be subject to somewhat erratic fluctuations.  While June 2011 to January 2012 saw a period of sustained increases, employment has declined since then.  Thunder Bay is still very much an economy in transition.

Figure 2

Does Ontario Need Another Growth Plan?

Last Saturday’s Globe and Mail (February 18, B6) ran an article titled “Rebuilding Ontario: A Plan for the Way Forward” which laid out a discussion of Ontario's economic future. For Northerners, all the talk of decline and the need for diversification was strangely familiar.  Indeed, one can best describe what is happening as the “Northern Ontarioization” of Ontario’s economic discourse as Ontario tries to decide how to grow its future economy in the wake of the Drummond Report, which seems to have finally crystallized the fact that Empire Ontario has slipped into decline.  Of course, some of us saw the eclipse of Ontario a bit earlier than that (check out End of Empire, National Post, February 19, 2005, FP19) but better late than never.

The Globe and Mail described four options for the province to get its “mojo back”. They were financial services, technology, health care and natural resources. Missing was that perennial Northern Ontario favorite - tourism.  Despite the talk of putting a casino in Toronto, it is unlikely to see Ontario reinventing itself as Vegas North. Vegas style tourism requires a degree of individual and entrepreneurial freedom that regulatory Ontario is unlikely to acquire anytime soon.

Of all these options, the one most likely to kick start Ontario’s economy is the natural resource sector. The mining frontier in Ontario’s North – especially the so-called Ring of Fire- can serve as an investment frontier for the rest of the province much like mining and forestry did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  However, this does require that the province embrace its North rather than treat it as a remote relic of the economic past.  Here, the contrast is made with Quebec.  According to the Globe and Mail: “Rather than shun its expansive north, Quebec is emphasizing it, hashing out an ambitious 25-year project dubbed “Plan Nord”.  Quebec is betting its future on developing mining, energy and forestry resources located far north of its major cities. Ontario could adopt a similar scheme.”

Really?  How interesting.  The fact is Ontario has also developed a Northern Growth Plan – a point the Globe and Mail article seemed to have missed but then Canada’s “national” newspaper is based in Toronto.  Part of what is wrong with Ontario’s economy is a myopic economic vision that does not look outside of Toronto.  Perhaps that is why since the Northern Growth Plan has been released, all that has resulted is more planning.  Given the dominance of Toronto vision in Ontario and its government, the chromite deposits of the Ring of Fire could only be developed quickly if they were at the corner of Yonge and Bloor.

Ontario does not need a growth plan.  Ontario needs a set of concrete actions to develop its northern resource frontier as an investment frontier for the province.  The North can be a place for infrastructure investment and value-added processing that can drive economic growth in Ontario.  The North can be a frontier for the deployment of Ontario’s labour skills and human capital.  Given the capital and technology intensive nature of modern mining, the North can also be a frontier for high technology industries.  And, the financial service industry in Toronto got its start in the financing of mining ventures in Northern Ontario.  Financing new mining ventures in the North can once again be a source of growth for Toronto’s financial sector.  What is Ontario waiting for?

The Slowdown in Net Worth

While I've always had an interest in wealth distribution, composition and growth from the perspective of 19th century economic history, recent evidence is also of interest.  I received a report on wealth in Italian households this week and posted a comparison of net worth to income estimates across G-7 countries on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.  I decided to follow up with a look at data on per capita Canadian net worth for persons and unincorporated businesses.  Given the recent warnings about the rising level of consumer and personal indebtedness in Canada, it comes as no surprise that the last four years have seen a halt to rising net worth.  Between 1971 and 2010, real per capita net worth (in 2002 dollars) in Canada nearly tripled.  It peaked in 2007, then dropped,  but has yet to recover to its 2007 level.  Along with the shock of the financial crisis on investment portfolios, recent years have also seen growth in personal and consumer debt limit net worth growth.  Over the period 2007 to 2010, the average annual growth rate of net worth was 0.7 percent.  Compare that to 3.2 percent for the period 2000 to 2006 or 3.7 percent for the 1990s.  While the growth rate of net worth has slowed, we have not seen the steep declines of the United States where the recession was driven by a collapse in net worth brought about by the end of the U.S. housing boom and the drop in house values.  To date, we have been spared that type of "balance sheet" recession.  However, the February 4th issue of The Economist drew attention to Canada's housing market as being in a bubble of its own. The good news is that a soft landing was predicted.  Rather than a bubble, the Canadian housing market was referred to being more of a "balloon"  and balloons can deflate slowly - if not pricked by a pin.

Where the Jobs Are – Ontario Edition

Statistics Canada’s labor force release on Friday revealed that in Ontario there was an increase in the number of people searching for work which pushed the unemployment rate up 0.4 percentage points to 8.1%. In the 12 months to January 2012, employment in the province increased with all the growth occurring in the first half of the period.  When the numbers are examined by major urban centre, it becomes apparent that a slowdown in employment growth has begun over the last six months with much of it is being driven by the Toronto area.  The two accompanying figures show the percentage change in seasonally adjusted monthly employment for major Ontario centers January 2011 to January 2012 (Figure 1) and August 2011 to January 2012 (Figure 2).

Year over year (Figure 1), there were employment increases in Ottawa-Gatineau, Kingston, Peterborough, Oshawa, Hamilton, St. Catharines-Niagara, Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, Guelph, Barrie and Thunder Bay.  The cities with the largest annual percent increases in employment were Guelph, Peterborough and Thunder Bay.  The last six months (Figure 2) reveal that a slowdown has indeed begun with employment growth slowing just about everywhere except Peterborough, Thunder Bay and Hamilton – which all saw increases in their employment growth rate.  Toronto – which accounts for 48 percent of the employment in Ontario has seen a drop in employment of just under 1 percent over the course of the year.  Brantford has seen the largest percentage declines in employment.  Over the last six months, even the usually robust Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge and Barrie areas have slipped into employment declines.  Right now, the best places in Ontario for job growth are Peterborough, Hamilton, Guelph and believe it or not – Thunder Bay.

Investment Activity and Trends in Northern Ontario: Part Three – Thunder Bay and Sudbury

In this third installment on investment activity in Northern Ontario as illustrated by building permit data, I am going to focus on the roles of Thunder Bay and Sudbury.  These are the two largest urban centres in Northern Ontario with CMA populations of 122,000 and 158,000 respectively accounting for about 38 percent of Northern Ontario’s population of 745,000.  As the largest urban nodes, one would expect them to be major drivers of economic activity and new investment and the data suggests that they are indeed major economic contributors but are not exactly punching much above their population weight.

Figure 1 shows the total nominal value of building permits (and the linear trends) issued in Thunder Bay and Greater Sudbury over a 20-year period and reveal that Thunder Bay has stayed relatively flat over this period whereas Sudbury enjoyed a pronounced boom from 2003 to 2009 but has since cooled off somewhat.  More interesting is Figure 2, which plots Sudbury’s share of Northeastern Ontario’s permits, Thunder Bay’s share of the Northwest’s permits and then their combined share of all of Northern Ontario.  On average, over the period 1989-2011, Greater Sudbury has accounted for about 34 percent of all building permit values in the Northeast and Thunder Bay for about 60 percent of the values in the Northwest.  Both of these are in line with their respective population shares with Thunder Bay somewhat more dominant in its region and together they account for an average of about 41 percent of Northern Ontario’s building permit activity.  This share has been trending down slightly over the period 1989-2011 generally as a result of weaker performance by Thunder Bay given that the trend for Sudbury has been pretty constant.

While Thunder Bay and Sudbury are important economic drivers for the region, these results suggest that they are not overly dominant and that new investment activity is dispersed throughout Northern Ontario.  The other towns and cities of the North – particularly Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and North Bay – are also important drivers.  Thunder Bay and Sudbury’s share of new investment activity in Northern Ontario is approximately the same as their combined population share of the region.

Employment Picture Improves in Thunder Bay

The latest Labour Force Survey numbers from Statistics Canada suggest the Canadian economy as a whole is treading water as employment stayed virtually unchanged while the unemployment rate edged up slightly.  However, the results for Thunder Bay show a decline in the unemployment rate to where it now is at 6.2 percent - well below the national average of 7.6 percent.  In addition, the numbers for the last four months show that both employment and the labour force have expanded in Thunder Bay.  Between October 2011 and January 2012, employment rose from 60,100 to 63,600 - an increase of 6 percent.  Meanwhile, the labour force grew from 64,600 to 67,800 over the same period - an increase of 5 percent.  Employment has actually been growing faster than the labour force recently which is good economic news.  What is the source of all this growth?  Well, the numbers are not broken down locally by sector but the national numbers show increases in annual employment growth (January 2011 to January 2012) in the natural resource and construction sectors as well as transportation and housing.  It is likely a similar trend is at work in Thunder Bay given the numerous construction job sites dotting the city, the mining service activities and our traditional transportation role. 

Balancing the Budget: The Ontario Plot Thickens

The Conference Board of Canada has waded into the Ontario pre-budget deliberation process with a report that says Ontario will be unable to balance its budget for a decade as a result of sluggish economic growth and shrinking government revenues.  Moreover, the Conference Board has focused on reining in health care costs as the most important factor in dealing with the budget balance – which hopefully can be achieved by 2021-22.  Aging and slower labor force growth can be expected to reduce Ontario’s economic growth and hence the growth of government revenues. 

According to a report on Global News, Premier McGuinty is disputing the prognosis of the Conference Board that Ontario will not be able to balance the budget.  I have to admit that while Ontario does have a serious budget problem, the Premier is probably right in not getting too obsessed with the Conference Board report.  The Conference Board is predicting a dismal decade of economic growth for Ontario but then it has also been predicting major upturns for Thunder Bay’s economy for at least five years and that has not happened either.  (See my post Forecasting Thunder Bay's GDP Growth).  The point is, circumstances change and predictions are revised.

Ontario has been experiencing slow economic growth for about a decade now.  During the period 2000-2011, its provincial government expenditures grew at an average annual rate of 5.7 percent while its revenues grew 4.5 percent.  For the period 2008 to 2011, expenditures grew at 6.7 percent while revenues grew at 3.0 percent.  In 2011-12, total revenue was 108.8 billion dollars and expenditures 124.8 billion for a 16 billion dollar deficit.

Let’s assume the following scenario.  For 2012-13, the Ontario government freezes total government spending at 124.8 billion dollars (note the Table is in millions of dollars).  The year after, it implements some of the recommendations of the Drummond Report and then cuts 3% in spending from the total Ontario government budget – a cut of about 3.8 billion dollars in spending.  After this, it allows spending to grow at 1 percent annually.  At the same time all of this is happening, we let total government revenue grow at 2.5 percent annually - below the average rate for 2008-2011.  The result, by 2017-18, there is indeed a balanced budget (see the Table below).  This is not a painless exercise. In real terms (adjusted for inflation) these represent real reductions in resources.  Assuming 2 percent inflation, between 2012-13 and 2017-18, total spending would rise less than 1% while prices would rise 13 percent.  In real terms, government spending would shrink 10 percent. 

The budget deficit could shrink even faster if economic growth recovers somewhat and revenues rise faster, which is not outside the realm of possibility given the slight rebound being detected in the United States to which much of Ontario’s economy is tied.  It could also shrink faster if larger upfront cuts are made.   It is certainly not going to be any fun governing in a decade like this but it will be possible to balance the budget ahead of schedule provided a government is able to set out a plan and stick to it in a disciplined fashion.