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Percent Change from Latest Year Year Earlier Data Earlier N.B. Canada
Labour Force (Mar/93) 336,000 333,000 0.9 1.1
Employment (Mar/93) 296,000 289,000 2.4 1.3
Unemployment Rate (Mar/93) 11.9% 13.2% -- 11.0%sup(1)
Participation Rate (Mar/93) 59.8% 59.5% -- 65.3%sup(1)
Unemployment Insurance Beneficiaries (Feb/93) 79,530 81,660 -2.6 1.5
Total Wages and Salaries (Dollar million, Jan - Dec/92) 6,983 6,827 2.3 2.0
Consumer Price Index (All items, 1986=100, Feb/93) 125.8 124.9 0.7 2.3
Value of Retail Trade (Dollar million, Jan - Dec/92) 4,753 4,595 3.4 2.0
Value of Domestic Exports (Dollar million, Jan - Dec/92) 3,013 3,063 -1.6 11.1
Value of Manufacturing Shipments (Dollar million, Jan - Dec/92) 5,730 5,405 6.0 1.0
Cargoes Shipped through Port of Saint John ('000 t, Jan - Feb/92): Imports 1,757 1,808 -2.8 N/A Exports 1,414 1,153 22.6 N/A
Note (1) Actual rate, Canada, March, 1993. Labour force data are adjusted for seasonal variation.
Source: Statistics Canada, Ports Canada.
In retrospect, the recession in New Brunswick mimicked the Canadian recession more closely than any of the other Atlantic provinces. The province started losing jobs in April, 1990, the same month as Canada, and seven months before other provinces in the region. The recession erased 11,000 jobs from the New Brunswick landscape from peak to trough, or 3.7% of the labour force. The Canadian economy lost 3.8% of its labour force from peak to trough. New Brunswick, by most accounts, had the mildest recession in the region, and was first to recover.
Since employment bottomed out in late 1991, the province has regained about 12,000 jobs, amounting to what it lost during recession, and then some. Employment in March was up healthily from a year ago, on higher participation. The labour force is expanding again, and the unemployment rate has declined to within a point of ther national average. In the context of the Atlantic economy, this is quite remarkable. A slightly higher proportion of all jobs is part - time, but the upward trend of this measure is nothing like as pronounced since the early 1980s as, for example, in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (chart at right; see also charts on pages 16 and 24).
Job growth in 1992 was strongest in goods sectors, particularly manufacturing and construction. Service sector employment has...