BCBusiness

B E S T CI T I E S F O R W O R K I N B.C. 26 BCBUSINESS DECEMBER/JANUARY 2017 much you're spending on rent or mortgage payments or util- ities, however, matters a great deal—as does the amount of money you have left at the end of the day for a bit of fun. Fort St. John and Dawson Creek each dropped a spot on this year's list, to No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. While B.C.'s Northeast remains an economically attractive region, with some of the high- est incomes in the province, the unemployment rate has skyrocketed there over the past year—from 5.5 per cent in September 2015 to 9.4 per cent in September 2016. So why didn't the two towns in B.C.'s oil-and-gas heartland drop further? According to Peter Miron, senior research associate with Environics, the unemployment rate is a very imperfect measure of job health. "In practice, I put an extremely low weighting on unemployment," says Miron. "The issue with unemploy- ment rates is that you might have a lot of people looking for a job, but they're not des- perately actively searching for work. They're not struggling." As to whether a high unem- ployment rate should encour- age workers or discourage them, Miron thinks that's "a matter of some debate. There are so many things going on under that number that it's hard to really say that it's a good sign or a bad sign." In other words, it's still too early to tell whether lasting damage will be felt up north by the slump in oil and gas prices. Miron thinks that house- hold i ncome s—a nd t he growth therein—is a much more important factor to look at. And there, you see a high correlation between the cities at the top of our list and the "ve-year income growth numbers: Squamish, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek and Kelowna (No. 1 through No. 4) each experienced income growth of close to 20 per cent. "The "ve-year growth rate is like the stock market: just because you had a good past "ve years doesn't mean you'll have a good next "ve years," explains Miron. "But in the absence of any other informa- tion, it's a pretty good indica- tor that something is going right there." And then, of course, you need reasons to stay in a city. That's why we added the mea- sure of recreational spend- ing, which tracks everything from money spent on home entertainment equipment to iTunes downloads to live sporting and performing arts events. On that score, cities such as Fort St. John, Kelowna and Kamloops live large, while Lower Mainland cities such as Vancouver, Burnaby a nd New West m i nster— perhaps shell-shocked by high housing costs—live more frugally. As Miron puts it: "Recreational spending is a very nice way of distilling what's left over at the end of the day. It's money-induced fun."—M.O'G * We only considered cities with more than 10,000 permanent residents. * We excluded bedroom communities such as West Vancouver, Port Moody and White Rock, which have high incomes but relatively small job markets. * We didn't consider UBC, which technically is its own jurisdiction. * Where communities have both a district and town/city government– in North Vancouver and Langley–we combined the numbers. * Finally, while we believe Environics' data is the best available, it is not without limitations. Our income numbers, for example, are produced using Statistics Canada and Canada Revenue Agency data projected forward to 2016. And the unemployment rate uses gures from Statistics Canada's September 2016 Labour Force Survey, which only calculates a regional number and will not reect changes occurring in the latter half of 2016. A few caveats: While B.C.'s Northeast remains an economically attractive region, with some of the highest incomes in the province, the unemployment rate has skyrocketed there over the past year 5.5% September 2015 9.4% September 2016 4 1 2 11 6 25 15 13 3 8 10 23 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 2017 RANK 2016 RANK

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