Sunday, February 24, 2013

Excellent Ottawa Citizen Article on Lowered Ontario Population Growth

This article from the Ottawa Citizen about declining population growth is fantastic, with a lot of good numbers. When considering Ontario's GDP growth, I've been using the 1.2% per year population growth rate from 2011. That's important when considering GDP growth per capita and considering how low Ontario's GDP growth has been since the Harris era, GDP growth per capita is almost nil. If population growth is slowing down, then Ontario's tepid GDP growth could be headed lower in future.


"Quarterly demographic estimates released by StatsCan show Ontario’s population rose by just 40,200 in the third quarter of 2012 — the smallest third-quarter increase since 1993. That followed second-quarter population growth that was the lowest since 1981.

The province’s population rose by only about 107,000, to 13.5 million, in the first nine months of 2012 — the slowest growth this century."

So annualizing the 107,000 number (which may be a bad assumption if fourth quarter numbers are usually different from the first three of the year) to 142,666, that's a growth rate of 1.06% a year. That's not a cratering from 1.2% but it is a definite change.

Some numbers on Ontario immigration and inter-provincial migrants:


"Part of the reason for the decelerating growth is that immigrants are far less likely than they once were to pick Ontario as their destination within Canada.

Since 2001, annual immigration to Ontario has declined by one-third. In 2011, it dropped below 100,000 for the first time this century, and could be even lower in 2012.

But interprovincial migration is another key factor. Ontarians are leaving the province in growing numbers for other parts of Canada. In the third quarter of last year alone, the net interprovincial outflow was 5,591 — more than in all of 2011 or 2010.

For the first nine months of 2012, Ontario had a net loss of 13,500 residents to other provinces. That’s more than quadruple the number for all of 2011."

Those numbers aren't good for future population growth especially if they are accelerating. Clearly people aren't deciding in favour of the Ontario economy and with Alberta an option in a country with free mobility that's problematic.


"He said the exodus to Alberta is being led by young Ontarians, who were hardest hit during and after the recession. Between September 2008 and July 2009, more than 110,000 15-to-24-year-olds lost their jobs, and a further 60,000 youth jobs disappeared between June and November 2010.

Jedwab said Ontario’s “dismal” interprovincial migration numbers speak to the perception of its economic prospects by some residents. “Interprovincial migration is never a good sign for an economy.”"

Ouch.

These numbers on the type of immigrants Ontario is receiving is also interesting:


"The type of immigrant coming to Ontario has also shifted. In 2001, nearly two-thirds were economic class immigrants. But that has now fallen to barely half. More of Ontario’s immigrants are now arriving through the family class and humanitarian streams than in the past, and often have a harder time finding jobs and require more government assistance."

That's not going to good on for GDP growth as economic immigrants will clearly produce way more GDP per capita than the family class and a shift in the ratio means less economic growth.

What does this all mean? For one thing, those long term population projections for the GTA probably need to be lowered a lot. Historically the housing industry has been an engine for Ontario, however with less new people, there's less demand for new housing, including downtown Toronto condos. Considering how much of Toronto's GDP is driven by new condos, ranging from real estate agents to construction workers to interior designers, lowered demand is going to hurt.

For anyone interested in the Ontario economy, these population figures bear watching. Here's the Statistics Canada page with provincial population numbers by year.

For Ontario:
2008 12,932,500
2009 13,068,800
2010 13,223,800
2011 13,366,300
2012 13,350,500




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