You can’t miss the swagger in the London-area economy.

Our official unemployment rate is down to 5.4 per cent, almost as good as it gets — the lowest in more than a decade, and just half a percentage point off the record-low 14 years ago.

The area’s real estate and construction markets are booming, and its economic output grew by an enviable 2.7 per cent last year.

But scratch below that shiny surface, and the hard fact is that only about three-quarters of working-age adults in the area — those aged 25 to 54, men and women in their prime working years — are actually working or looking for work.

That’s the lowest ratio of any major city in Canada, and one that’s been falling for years.

The other one in four adults not working — a mystery to many who study the job market — is the highest ratio among major Ontario centres.

Combined with new census figures showing average household income in the London area is the second-lowest in Ontario, it’s a sign not all that glitters is gold in an economy that has fought back from the brutal recession of nearly a decade ago.

So, who are the one in four adults sidelined in the job market?

They’re people like Erin DeCoste, who came back to her hometown from Toronto, where she’d worked in communications and marketing, when her husband landed a job in St. Thomas as a truck mechanic.

“I cannot get a job and it feels ridiculous to me,” said the mother of two young children, who studied English and political science in university.

DeCoste, 32, thought her experience and education would make for an easy touchdown in London.

She was wrong: So far, she’s only found some part-time tutory in English as a second language. She suspects having two young kids is working against her.

“I have to explain the gaps in my resume — two maternity leaves,” she said, adding “it just shuts down the interview.”

DeCoste says grabbing a minimum-wage job is barely worth it, once transportation and child care costs are factored in.

“I would rather be home with my kid instead of coming home with 20 bucks in my pocket every day,” she said.

She’s not alone.

While about 87 per cent of working-age Canadians are actually employed or looking for work, in London that rate is just under 76 per cent.

“It’s very discouraging (for London) because the national rate is moving higher,” said Sal Gualtieri, a BMO economist.

Gualtieri said he was puzzled by London’s poor numbers, but said it’s likely due to the long-term loss of big manufacturing plants, heavy industry that was clobbered in the recession and its fallout.

One clue is that other manufacturing cities, such as Windsor and St. Catharines, are also struggling, he said.

Other answers about the mysterious one in four adults not working are also starting to emerge, painting a picture of a city hit by an exodus of people in that very same age group and one that, for all the benefits of its relatively low cost of living, is hanging onto people who can’t afford to leave.

Women, it appears, are disproportionately represented in the one to four.

And, perhaps surprisingly, large numbers of the one-quarter of adults not working have post-secondary education.

The Local Employment Planning Council picked up on the alarming trend about 18 months ago and commissioned a study delving into why so many people aren’t working in the London area.

The study made no comparisons to other cities, so there’s no clear bottom-line answer why London is falling behind.

But one key statistic may be that the London area’s population of people between the ages of 25 and 54 fell by 20,700 in the decade ending in 2015.

While those people are no longer counted in the local stats, Debra Mountenay of the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board said the exodus still has an impact.

“If there’s no jobs here, people leave. Even if those people aren’t counted, it means there’s a drop in the actual number of people in age group who are working,” she said.

Mountenay said the people left behind, who didn’t leave to find work, are likely less mobile.

Another possible factor is London’s relatively low-cost of living, one of the lowest of any metro areas in Canada. With house prices here still a fraction of those in Toronto, it’s easier to get by in a low- or single-income household.

Just ask DeCoste.

“We couldn’t really survive in Toronto, anyway,” she said. “We weren’t making enough money to buy a house.”



Dan Baylis. (MIKE HENSEN, The London Free Press)

Unpacking a jobs puzzler

Dan Baylis dreamed of being a millionaire by age 30, investing in real estate and using the communication skills he learned at Fanshawe College.

Instead, he’s barely scraping by on a provincial disability program, struggling with bipolar disorder and desperate to find a decent job.

Baylis, 31, graduated in broadcast journalism in 2006. But with job prospects bleak, he got a position he liked at a TD Canada Trust call centre.

But after three years, that job was outsourced.

Baylis tried his hand at real estate investment, believing he could make money flipping houses. He found out it’s much harder than it looks on TV.

That’s when his mental health problems really kicked in,

“I don’t blame the economy or the job market for my emotional problems, But it has helped lead me to where I am now. It snowballs,” he says.

He shuffles from one employment agency to the next, getting tips and advice but no solid leads and a lot of dead ends.

He says a lack of transportation makes it tough to find work. Bus fare to job interviews is a big expense. He was once stranded in Tillsonburg after a casual moving job. He said it’s tough to stay motivated as he searches for someone willing to give him a break.

“What would really benefit me is an employer who understands.”



Mackenzie Kirschner. (Submitted)

‘Never been told they can be something.’

At 21, Mackenzie Kirschner is poised, articulate and has a good job. But she’d never judge anyone struggling with poverty and despair.

“People might think I was just another young mom living off the government. But I was a young, driven mom, battling a lot of obstacles,” she says.

Kirschner moved to London in April from nearby Melbourne because there were job opportunities and support, a pattern picked up the in the LEPC study.

She was caring for her year-old daughter, getting by on social assistance and stuck, she says, in a bad relationship with little idea how to find a job.

With no post-secondary education, it was hard to find a nine-to-five job when day care was available.

She declined 10 interviews in two weeks because of the hours of work required.

At one point, she found a minimum-wage job but getting to and from the only available day care added four hours a day.

“I was leaving at seven in the morning and getting back at seven in the evening and barely paying my bills,” she says.

She said her salvation was Youth Opportunities Unlimited. Counsellors there steered her through three job-training programs and secured child care and other support as she worked her way through temporary placements until she recently landed a sales job at Compudata, an IT support firm.

Although she’s pulled herself up, Kirschner has sympathy for street kids she says may look scary but have heart-breaking stories.

“It’s a cycle. They have never been told that they can be something.”



Richard McKinnon. (MIKE HENSEN, The London Free Press)

One employer's view

Car wash owner Richard McKinnon doesn’t have a problem finding customers — it’s finding staff that’s holding him back.

“I can’t tell you how many sales dollars I’ve lost because I haven’t been able to hire enough people,”

McKinnon once had 13 people lined up to interview for a job and not one showed up.

He has 14 employees at his two Miami Car Wash locations, on Springbank Drive and Exeter Road. The Springbank location includes an auto detailing service where cars are thoroughly cleaned, inside and out, by hand.

McKinnon says he pays between $13 and $15 an hour, but staff make more than $16 with tips

“It’s not a sweat shop. It’s a decent place to work and it’s family-run,” he says.

But even when he manages to hire a new employee, they often don’t last long.

“They quit showing up for work. They make excuses and it goes downhill fast,” he says.

McKinnon says he’s spoken to other small businesses with the same problem. He says it appears some people on social assistance go through the motions of looking for work, but aren’t serious about finding it.

He said social assistance agencies should do a follow-up with employers to ensure that recipients of benefits put in genuine effort to find work.

“If the government is doling out all this money, there should be some feedback to whoever makes a decision on who get assistance,” he says.

And those job fairs?

On Tuesday, 2,100 jobs will be up for grabs at a Western Fair District jobs fair.

Up to 2,000 job seekers are expected.

Great match, right? Not so fast, says one expert.

The problem isn’t the people who show up, but those who don’t — the discouraged workers, says Rob Collins of the London Economic Development Corp.

“Not all job seekers are seeking assistance to put their best foot forward,” says Collins, the agency’s director of workforce development.

Collins says while there’s strong demand for skilled trades and by the tech industry, workers have to be retrained for a shot at those jobs. And with London a regional city, it also draws outside job seekers.

Collins said with the job market moving online, and word-of-mouth and referrals the preferred hiring strategy, people without personal connections are at a disadvantage.

“The job fairs are there to help correct that, to help people who don’t have the connections to meet face-to-face with employers.”

Employment Ontario Employment Service Providers by The London Free Press on Scribd

BY THE NUMBERS

Findings from the London Employment Council labour market participation study

Completed in February

Included Elgin, Middlesex and Oxford counties and London

Interviews, surveys and focus groups with employers and 163 people not working.

Found 42,200 people in the area were “non-participants,” neither working nor looking for work

Of that total number:

12,800, about 30 per cent, have post-secondary education.

About 76 per cent, or 30,200, are women

8,400 of the 42,200 are landed immigrants; of those, 7,800 are women

2,500 are Indigenous, most living off reserves.

38,200, or 92.7 per cent, “did not want work or were unable to work.”

TOP REASONS FOUND FOR NOT WORKING

Transportation costs

Cost and availability of child care

Workplace discrimination

Lack of experience and training

Poor physical and mental health

OTHER FINDINGS

The largest job growth tends to be in skilled trades, manufacturing, construction and the tech industry — all, jobs generally dominated by men.

For mothers with small kids, a paycheck may only put them slightly farther ahead than staying at home.

Among some immigrants, a woman in the household working if the man is unemployed, is seen as improper.

hdaniszewski@postmedia.com

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