The Toronto region has dominated job creation in Ontario over the past decade even as some cities have struggled to add new workers, according to a report from the province’s fiscal watchdog that points to “several ongoing challenges” in the labour market.
Over all, the province’s job market had a strong 2019, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario said Thursday. Roughly 210,000 jobs were added during the year, the largest annual increase on record, and wage gains were the strongest since 2008. (The FAO used average annual data from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey in its analysis.)
But the report also highlighted “uneven” hiring within the province. Over the past 10 years, the Toronto region accounted for about 66 per cent of jobs created by the province’s census metropolitan areas (CMAs), higher than its share of the population. Ottawa-Gatineau was next highest, contributing 8.1 per cent of jobs.
The vast majority of hiring has been in the Greater Toronto Area, said Robert Kavcic, senior economist at Bank of Montreal, because over time Ontario has become more of a professional services and high-tech type of province.
Toronto’s job gains are likely even higher than advertised, Mr. Kavcic added, because Statscan’s LFS measures where employed people live, rather than where they work. Thus, some of Ontario’s top places for job creation – such as Hamilton, Oshawa and Barrie – include those who commute to Toronto for work.
“You see a lot of strength in perimeter cities” of Toronto, he added.
Meantime, five out of the 15 CMAs saw employment decline in 2019, including Peterborough, Thunder Bay and St. Catharines-Niagara.
“The concentration of job creation within the major CMAs highlights the challenge of economic diversification among Ontario’s regions,” the FAO said. “Many CMAs are highly dependent on goods-producing industries such as manufacturing, which have struggled because of increasing global competition.”
In response to the report, Finance Minister Rod Phillips acknowledged that some parts of the province and its economy were booming, while others – such as the North, and the manufacturing sector – were not.
“There’s more to do,” Mr. Phillips said. “And certainly more to do as relates to manufacturing.”
The FAO’s report also pointed to a long-term rise in self-employment. In 2019, nearly two out of every five new jobs created in Ontario were for self-employed individuals who don’t employ others on a paid basis, and this group’s share of overall employment has risen to a record 11.5 per cent.
“Researchers view self-employed individuals without paid workers as a more precarious type of employment, lacking the security that comes with standard work arrangements,” the FAO said.
The report outlined a handful of positive developments of late. In 2019, the private sector accounted for most of the hiring that took place, and new jobs were largely full-time. Nearly all of the new jobs were in the services sector, with strong gains in health care and social assistance, and professional, scientific and technical services.
Further, the proportion of Ontarians in the labour force – that is, either working or looking for employment – increased for only the second time in the past 10 years.
With a report from Jeff Gray
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