There was a buzz across Canada last week when the jobs statistics for December were released and they showed the country's economy continues to be on a hot streak.
Overall, there were 79,000 new jobs created in Canada, including 24,000 full-time positions.
Those were completely unexpected numbers, and economists are still trying to understand them. (But since they didn't see the job surge coming, we have to wonder how valid their explanations will be.)
The news coverage was gushing about the jobs numbers with descriptions like “unbelievable” and “spectacular” filling headlines.
The national unemployment rate was even pushed down to 5.7 per cent, the lowest in 42 years.
Of course, we decided to read some news reports to see how the NWT was doing in this explosion of employment.
However, there was not a single word about the NWT – nor Nunavut or the Yukon – in the first article we read. The second and third articles were the same – nothing about the North.
That can't be right, we thought, and we kept on reading. But not a mention of the North was to be found in the maybe two dozen online articles we read, including a few from American news outlets.
What is going on, we wondered? Was every editor everywhere in North America ignoring the North, and cutting our stats out of their news stories?
So we went to the source – Statistics Canada – to see what was happening.
It turns out the agency's monthly Labour Force Survey doesn't include the Northern territories, not in the sense of figures for each month, anyway.
Instead, as a five-paragraph section dedicated to the territories explains, there are quarterly updates for the NWT, the Yukon and Nunavut.
"The Labour Force Survey collects labour market data in the territories, produced in the form of three-month moving averages," it states.
Paragraph three notes that NWT employment in the fourth quarter was unchanged from the previous quarter, and the unemployment rate remained at seven per cent.
Well, we guess that's something at least.
However, while the territories got four paragraphs, the provinces got detailed reports.
There were even all kinds of stats on Prince Edward Island (population 142,907, according to the 2016 census).
Why tiny Prince Edward Island – in population and territory – deserves the full treatment by Statistics Canada while the North doesn't is a question worth asking.
After all, the North's total population is 113,604, which is not quite as many people as in the economic powerhouse of Prince Edward Island, but it should be enough to receive equal treatment to the provinces.
How hard can it be to tabulate monthly employment/unemployment statistics for the North? With fewer people up here, you think it would be the easiest place to do that in Canada.
The only thing we can conclude is that Statistics Canada thinks – for some unknown reason – that it is not necessary to do a detailed monthly jobs report on the North.
We disagree. A job – or an unemployed person looking for a job – is just as important in the North as it is anywhere else in the country.