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The Windsor area’s population grew by more than 1,000 new residents for the seventh consecutive month in January while still managing to reduce its unemployment rate, which remains tied for the highest in Canada.
The population for the Windsor census metropolitan area, which includes Lakeshore, Tecumseh, LaSalle and Amherstburg, reached 321,700 after 1,100 new residents arrived last month.
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In the past two years, the population of those communities has grown by just under 15,000 people.
“These are really encouraging signs,” said Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Rakesh Naidu.
“In spite of the continuous population growth, we’re creating enough jobs to absorb the newcomers. The jobs are also not just jobs in our core sectors related to manufacturing.
“That’s really heartening.”
There were 2,100 more people employed in the Windsor area last month than in December, bringing total employment to 186,400. The number of unemployed was trimmed by 1,400, to 14,400.
While the local jobs rate improved, Windsor remains tied with St. Catharines for the highest unemployment rate in Canada (7.2 per cent). But while the national and provincial unemployment rates both fell by 0.1 of a percentage point — to 5.7 per cent and 6.2 per cent, respectively — the local unemployment dropped half a percentage point.
The local labour force also grew by 700 more workers available, to 200,800.
The unemployment rate is a silver lining
“Any company wanting to come here is going to look at available workforce as one of the top two or three things,” Naidu said. “In this instance, the unemployment rate is a silver lining.
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“We have a workforce with good skill sets and a workforce available in higher numbers than some other places.”
Driving the jobs recovery in January was the local manufacturing sector.
There were 1,900 more people working in manufacturing than the previous month. That boosts the number employed in the sector to 33,900.
The local growth in the sector comes in stark contrast to the 4,100 jobs lost in manufacturing in the rest of Ontario last month.
“The most important story in the January numbers is manufacturing,” said Workforce WindsorEssex’s special projects lead Corey Shenken.
“We know when it’s going well, its impact is felt in other sectors. We see that in the positive numbers pretty much across the board for the month.”
Shenken said Stellantis’s Windsor Assembly Plant is seeing overtime offered for regular weekday shifts and the plant has been running on a seven-day schedule since Christmas.
“That sort of thing is not only good for Stellantis, but it also helps all the Tier 1 through 3 suppliers keep their employees working steady,” Shenken said.
Other sectors to post positive numbers in January were transportation and warehousing (500 new jobs), education services (600), public administration (1,000) and professional, scientific and technical services (100).
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Naidu said the sectors that lost jobs, such as the 500 in wholesale/retail, 100 in food/accommodation and 300 in construction, are largely seasonal.
“In January and February, we’ve usually experienced a bigger drop in those sectors and that’s not happened,” Naidu said.
“One of the things about the population growth is it leads to increased consumption. If not for that growth, we would’ve been closer to losing 2,000 jobs in those sectors.”
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The biggest job loss was the 1,600 positions that disappeared in the financial, real estate, insurance and rental sector.
Shenken said the slowdown in the real estate and home construction markets due to increased borrowing costs, along with Canada’s big five banks trimming staff, were the main reasons for the decline in that sector.
“I expect things will pick up with the warm weather for construction and if interest rates start going down this spring,” Shenken said.
Both Shenken and Naidu expect the economic activity to continue to rise and the unemployment rate to fall in the coming months.
“People are recognizing the opportunities in this area and moving here,” Shenken said. “Our labour force is growing.
“I expect our population will continue to grow at the pace we’ve seen in the last year, if not faster. I’m very optimistic about 2024 with all the investment in the area starting to become operational.”
Dwaddell@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/winstarwaddell
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