By Fred Morley
The world is just emerging from a pretty deep recession. The US and Britain have been hit fairly hard, along with some parts of Canada – particularly Ontario and Alberta. But generally, we didn’t feel the bit of the recession as hard in Canada. But what about Halifax? Well, early this month I was in Ottawa, meeting with the heads of economic development. Let me tell you…what I got most out of my discussion with them is that Halifax has performed better than almost every other city in this country over the past year. According to Statistics Canada, we had big gains in employment throughout August and we had 9,300 net new jobs over the previous 12 months. This is the highest level of job growth of any Canadian city – regardless of size. That’s never happened before.
Last month, the Bank of Commerce told us in their Metro Monitor that Halifax had the strongest economy in the country. That’s also never happened before!
Then, a couple of weeks ago, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business told us that Nova Scotia numbers (which are mostly from Halifax) showed the second highest level of Business Confidence in the country. Only British Columbia was better, and in a few weeks, they will be hosting the Canadian Winter Olympics.
All of the numbers are in. Compared to every other city in the country, we’re kicking butt!
Stay tuned next week for the second half of Fred's blog post.
Fred Morley is the Executive Vice President and Chief Economist for the Greater Halifax Partnership.
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