By Shannon Hagerman
The Ottawa-Hull economy is booming with low unemployment rates. But even with all this good news, Centretown residents may be losing out.
“Most of the big job growth is going to be in the ’burbs,” said Gerry Geis, labour market analyst with Human Resources Development Canada. Geis cites congestion in the core as one reason why more companies, like the growing call-centre industry, aren’t settling in the area.
Figures from Statistics Canada show that in January there were 6,000 jobs created in Ottawa-Hull with unemployment falling to 6.1 per cent. The number of people seeking jobs fell by 4,000 in January, leaving 36,000 people still looking for work. This represents the third consecutive month of job growth in Ottawa-Hull.
Transportation congestion, school closures, and lack of parking are reasons why more new jobs aren’t being created in the core, said Karen Campbell, executive assistant at the Ottawa-Carleton Board of Trade.
“We are trying to ensure that the core gets revitalized so we can bring new business to the area,” said Campbell. The board represents 700 member firms in the area.
The board is lobbying regional government for new transportation lanes in order to slow congestion in the area and to create more parking facilities for shoppers.
“If I am going to go shopping, I’m going to go to a mall not a little shop on Bank Street where I have to search for a parking spot and put money in the meter,” she said.
Layoffs at Metropolitan Life and Digital Equipment, the closure of Beaver Lumber, and federal early-retirement packages caused unique one-time job losses, Geis said, stressing demand for workers remained high throughout this period.
“The economy was like a big pail,” Geis said. “We were stuffing jobs on the top but at the same time they were falling out the bottom.”
Losses in clerical jobs also hurt the Centretown area which has a large number of office-based businesses, Geis added. At the same time, strong retail sales helped the Centretown area that has a large proportion of restaurants and retail outlets, Geis said.
Figures collected by StatsCan show that December department store sales in the Ottawa-Hull area were up 5.8 per cent to $118 million from the year before, despite a spring-time slowdown when consumer confidence was dulled after the economic shutdown.
The new economic figures bode well for the future, Geis said, predicting the next few years will be good ones for job creation.
That’s what Lucas Curwen is hoping for. He’s been out of work for the past two years and says it’s the anxiety of not finding work that’s the worst.
“I just pound the pavement and put out as many resumes as I can, but being out of work for two years is a real long time,” says Curwen, a Centretown resident.
Curwen has worked as a mechanic and a meat cutter, but is now on social assistance. For Curwen, looking for work is a full-time job. He says he spends one week every month handing out resumes and the rest of the time he’s checking the job bank, calling people back and looking for interviews.
“Rejection is such a defeat. It starts all these other emotional things that are very hard to explain,” he says.
The low unemployment rate is good news, but Curwen said he’s so discouraged at this point he doesn’t pay much attention to statistics.
“They’re just numbers, 6.1, 5.8, 11.7, they don’t really matter if you can’t find a job,” he says.