WASHINGTON: For the first time in 15 years Windsor’s unemployment rate has dropped to 5.7 per cent. “It’s excellent news,” Matt Marchand, president and CEO of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, said Friday. The rate could drop even lower if the region focuses on getting people who have been unemployed for more than six months to a year back into the workforce as well as works on transportation to jobs in the growing manufacturing and agriculture sectors in Essex County, Marchand said.
“We can get even more aggressive and even drive that number lower with the amount of companies that we have now looking for people. We’re probably leaving about $500 million on the table right now,” he said of the estimate of investments Windsor-area companies could make if they knew they could get the workers. There’s a shortage of skilled trade workers and labourers in general, Marchand said. The Windsor-area jobless rate fell in September to 5.7 per cent, down slightly from 6.1 in August. The last time it was this low was February 2001.
A year ago in September the rate was 9.7 per cent. For years the Windsor region held the title of unemployment capital of Canada and now has one of the lowest jobless rates in the country. Victoria, B.C., and Québec City have the lowest rate at 4.7 per cent. Vancouver and Guelph are at 4.9 per cent and Regina, Kitchener-Waterloo and Kingston are just lower than Windsor.
Vincent Ferrao, an analyst with Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey, credits growth in manufacturing. There are about 5,000 more people working in manufacturing than a year ago, he said. In September there were 40,700 people working in manufacturing in the Windsor area. A year ago that number was 35,900 people and back in September 2010, there were 29,000 manufacturing jobs, he said.
