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Since the start of the pandemic, the incomparable @StatCan_eng emeritus Ray Bollman has been tracking the impacts on employment in rural and urban areas. I thought now might be a good time to look at the year in review.
TL;DR: ouch (1/n)
TL;DR: ouch (1/n)
First, overall trends. The pandemic was brutal for rural and urban workers compared with the avg of the previous 3 years, but as we entered summer appeared to be recovering. That recovery stalled however. Note that overall, rural jobs have fared just a bit better than urban (2/n)
The biggest impacts were jobs in accommodation and food service (no surprise), natural resources, and social services/healthcare. Accommodation and food services were the biggest loser. Note that the recovery here has clearly seen a backslide (3/n)
Here’s the view for jobs in forestry, fisheries, and mining (4/n)
And here is what employment in agriculture looked like, which I think is better than some expected (though note December) (5/n)
The education sector is where we find the only good news, especially for rural education workers. I think this deserves a look, because it means we did something well. Not perfect, but well. (6/n)
If you’re wondering why urban areas seem to have been hit worse than rural in terms of job losses, its because there are just more jobs to lose, including the immense impacts on accommodation and food service, as well as other sectors like information, culture & recreation (7/n)
Note: Its important to not assume that rural and urban areas share equal vulnerability to job losses, so these numbers don’t tell the whole story of the relative cumulative impacts being experienced by rural communities (8/n)
Here’s another look at the losses just for rural communities in accommodation and food services, the biggest sector hit. Things are not looking good going into the new year. (9/n)
Same for natural resource jobs, which saw no summer recovery (10/n)
Agriculture, again, fared better, which is OK news from a food security perspective (11/n)
I think the total story here though is one of cumulative effects & the backslide in some key sectors. I haven’t shown the numbers here for other sectors like construction or manufacturing, but they’ve been consistently bad too. The resilience is going to become threadbare (12/n)
The only ray of light is education. Clearly, steps have been taken that are keeping educators working (and kids learning). As a parent in Ontario, I can’t say I’m pleased with the province’s performance, and the numbers certainly do not track with the national ones (13/n)
Here’s a link to all data at the Ontario level as of November (14/n) https://www.ruralontarioinstitute.ca/knowledge-centre/focus-on-rural-ontario
Upshot? Its been brutal. Overall impacts on urban job losses have been higher, the cumulative impacts on rural are ostensibly more concerning. We should be thinking about tipping points. Education is a critical one—when rural communities lose schools it’s the death knell (15/n)
So the education trend in some provinces is good, and it needs to stay that way as we figure out how to achieve recovery in the other sectors. (16/16)
PS- Everything in this thread is shared with Ray's permission, and his contact info is on each of the above slides.
CC: @CRRF_FCRR @RplcCapr @ROInstitute @rdi_bu
CC: @CRRF_FCRR @RplcCapr @ROInstitute @rdi_bu
