The BMO Capital Markets spring regional labour market report card, which was released in July 2019, listed Thunder Bay, Ont. as the worst city to find a job in Canada among the 33 largest CMAs. (BMO Capital Markets)

The city of Thunder Bay, Ont. is the worst city in Canada to find a job among the 33 largest census metropolitan areas (CMAs) according to a report released in July. But it may not be as bad as it seems.

The regional labour market report card is released quarterly by the Bank of Montreal to analyze where the strongest job markets are in the country.

Robert Kavcic, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets and author of the report, said a drop in employment over the past year is the main factor in Thunder Bay's last place ranking.

"This is one case where we have seen a pretty dramatic fall-off in employment over the last year."

It may not be as bad as the rankings show

Kavcic added that the rankings of smaller cities in these reports often depend on which industries drive the local economies, and how well those particular industries are performing at the moment.

"The trouble is if one small city is highly exposed to one particular sector, like natural resources for example, it is hard to get away from weakness when those particular sectors are weak. The flip side of that is we had a very strong run over the most of the past decade where those resource-based cities are actually outperforming the GTA."

Overall, Kavcic said the rankings are relative and the labour market in Thunder Bay is not actually doing that poorly.

"When you look back - beyond just the last six months to a year - employment is pretty steady, the jobless rate is pretty stable and, historically, still pretty low. So in absolute terms, I don't think the situation is as bad as the ranking would suggest. In relative terms, no, it's not a labour market that's going to keep pace with the GTA or GVA or Montreal or one of the bigger, more diverse cities," Kavcic added. "But I think the ranking exaggerates the weakness a little."

Strongest job markets continue to be in the GTA

According to the report, the main takeaway is that the strongest job markets in the country continue to be the Greater Toronto Area, a few of the smaller cities surrounding the GTA, as well as Vancouver and Montreal.

This is because some of the strongest industries at the moment are consumer spending, housing, professional services and higher technology jobs — most of which are concentrated in the GTA.

Kavcic added, "That's where we're seeing a lot of the job growth. Consequently, we're seeing a lot of migration flows into the GTA because the jobs are available, which is driving housing demand and reinforcing the strength of that labour market."

The survey measures several factors — including population growth, job growth, employment rates and wage growth - that determine labour market strength, which is then used to create a ranking of which labour markets are the strongest across the country.

All data used to make the calculations and subsequent rankings are drawn from the Statistics Canada labour force surveys.