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Jobs figures a bit too bright?

Province's chief statitician skeptical

By: Murray McNeill

Posted: 02/6/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Wilf Falk questions the accuracy of the Statistics Canada survey.

STATISTICS Canada's latest monthly reading of the country's employment picture couldn't have provided better news for Manitoba.The labour force survey issued Friday shows the province gained 8,800 jobs in January, including 4,700 new full-time positions. It was by far the biggest month-to-month percentage gain in the country -- 1.4 per cent -- and more than four times the national average of 0.3 per cent.

It also more than made up for the 5,600 jobs StatsCan said were lost in December. The jobless rate dropped to 5.4 per cent from 5.8, compared with a 0.1 per cent reduction in the national jobless rate to 8.3 per cent.

But Manitoba's chief statistician -- Wilf Falk of the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics -- isn't buying any of it.

"What changed in our economy that would have created 8,400 new jobs last month? It doesn't ring right," Falk said.

"Did we lose 5,600 jobs in December and gain 8,400 last month? Absolutely not. It's imaginary movement."

Falk has been questioning the accuracy of the Manitoba labour-force survey for some time now, arguing the results are too volatile and don't give an accurate picture of what's going on in the economy.

He doesn't blame StatsCan, saying the federal agency does the best it can with limited resources. He initially thought the problem was with the survey sample -- about 4,600 households, which he felt was too small. So last year, the province paid StatsCan $1 million to add 1,000 households to its Manitoba survey in hopes that would eliminate the wilder fluctuations. But last month's numbers suggest that didn't work.

Now the Bureau of Statistics is taking matters into its own hands, with plans to survey the province's 600 largest employers to see what's really happening with jobs. Among the questions it will be asking are the size of their workforce, what it was three or four months ago and what they think it will be three or four months from now. It hopes to launch the electronic survey next week and to issue results by early April.

"Then we can get an idea of how real some of these changes are that the labour force numbers are telling us," Falk said. "We just want to know what the hell is going on out there."

He said he's hoping to persuade the provincial government to make it a permanent, quarterly survey, although it may be difficult to obtain funding for that in restraint-minded times.

Manitoba Chamber of Commerce spokesman Dan Overall and University of Manitoba economics professor John McCallum both praised the bureau's move, saying the province needs to start collecting more of its own jobs data.

Statistics Canada, meanwhile, stands by its report.

"We did take a second look at the numbers because we noticed they have been bouncing around, especially in the last two months," said Christel Le Petit, chief of analysis for the agency's labour force division.

She said it couldn't find anything wrong with the sample or the process, "so from our end everything looks fine."

But Le Petit said it's important to remember the numbers are just an estimate because they're based on a survey of households, not an actual head count. And for the results to be accurate 19 times out of 20, the margin of error in Manitoba's case is plus or minus 5,600 jobs. So the January number could be as low as 2,800 new jobs, or as high as 14,000.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 6, 2010 B4

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