where to
work in
Back by popular demand, we
survey the province and rank 36 B.C.
communities based on their job markets.
Who's up? Who's down? And why?
by Matt O'Grady
W
hen we published the Best
Cities for Work in B.C. feature
last January, we didn't know
quite what to expect. Yes, we
figured readers would have
an interest in which B.C. cities
had a hot job market or not—
communities are competitive,
after all, and we all like to know how we rank
compared to our neighbours. But the extent
of interest was rather overwhelming. Issues of
the magazine flew off newsstands during one
of the media industry's slowest months. Radio
and TV stations from across the province
wanted to talk to us about the winners, los-
ers and reasons why—and online, results were
dissected and shared across North America.
By the end of 2015, Best Cities for Work was by
far our most read story of the year.
So here we are again for an encore. In
2016, we've tweaked the methodology a bit
(more on that on p.37): we've kept the core
economic indicators (average household
income, income growth, population growth,
unemployment rate, people with degrees),
but dropped two (percentage of people using
transit and the labour participation rate) and
added a new indicator (worth 15 per cent of
the final score): average household income for
the under-35 demographic. Why such a spe-
cific metric? According to Peter Miron, senior
research associate with Environics Analytics
Exclusive
B C B u s i n e s s
s u r v e y
bcbusiness.ca JanuaRY 2016 BCBusiness 35
f o r W o r k i n B . C .
i n s i d e
