Times are tough for Quebec workers: 25,000 full-time workers got handed their walking papers in March, which amounts to over 1,000 axes falling per working day here.StatsCan reported that 8,300 new jobs were created during the same period, so the net loss was a still-nasty 16,800 jobs in a single month.
About 80 percent of the 25,000 jobs lost were in manufacturing and exporting. The province has been losing 10,000 jobs a month in that sector this year alone because the world won't buy the stuff we can make.
So unemployment ticked up from 7.4% to 7.7% percent, meanwhile Ontario's rate stayed the same and they lost one-third fewer jobs during that same time with a much-larger economy.
Attempts to explain Quebec's disastrous job situation result in a series of biased interpretations.
-The PQ government doesn't care much about employment or the economy because they're obsessed with independence and language, and as a result, jobs get lost every time they get in power.
- Manufacturing is simply not viable here because we overpay our highly-unionized workers.
-Companies are hoarding cash and opting not to spend it on workers.
- Canada, as a petroleum exporting nation, has seen its population fall victim to the situation common on many petroleum-exporting companies, which is that the population gets lazy and the culture of financing start-ups and inventing new businesses stagnates.
-We don't need workers to make things anymore, we need them to make websites better, and this is just part of the switch over to that reality.
Manufacturing jobs are largely outside of the city of Montreal, so the regions probably suffered more than the city. But to those of us who recall the painful 1990s in Quebec, the current situation feels like an alarming return to a dark era we had hoped was behind us forever.