BCBusiness

30 BCBusiness dECEMBER/JAnuARy 2018 • Our ranking only includes cities with more than 10,000 per- manent residents. • Bedroom communities may be great places to live, but they have rela- tively small job markets. For that reason, we excluded cities like Port Moody, white Rock and west Vancouver. • For Langley and North Vancouver, we com- bined the numbers for city/town and district governments. • We work with research partner Environics Analytics because we think it has the best available data, but there are limits. For example, to produce its income numbers, Environics Analytics uses statistics Canada and Canada Revenue Agency data projected forward to 2017. The unemployment rates shown in the rank- ing are from statscan's september 2017 labour Force survey, a three- month moving average that only calculates num- bers for the province's seven economic regions and won't reflect any changes for the rest of the year. Just so you know: This year, to better gauge quality of life, we also take into account how many people walk or bike to work–arguably a better yardstick than the number who use public transit. "The issue with mass transit is that it's not going to be available in all cities" – Peter Miron, Environics Analytics transit. "The issue with mass transit is that it's not going to be available in all cities," says Peter Miron, Toronto-based vice-president, demographic and economic data, with Environics Analytics. "Walk- ing and bicycling to work are enjoyable activities," Miron adds. "Mass transit might be cheap, but it's not necessarily adding to your enjoyment of life." When it comes to walk- ing and biking, you'd think urban centres like Vancouver would have an edge. But our three top cities—all relatively small communities—did well in that category, too. "You've got a very strong accessibility factor, but it's almost picking up not necessarily urbanity as much as quaintness," Miron notes. He warns against „ixat- ing on unemployment rates, which have dropped in most B.C. regions as the province builds on its strong economic performance in 2016. "If you see an area with very a low unemployment rate, it could be because everyone's got a job," Miron says. "But it could also mean that everyone who doesn't have a job has now been so discouraged looking for work that they're no lon- ger in the labour force." Although the ranking shows where our 36 cities placed last year, those that climbed or fell shouldn't make too much of it—and not just because we tweaked the methodoloŽy. As Miron explains, the data sets his 'rm uses get updated from year to year, sometimes leading to revisions of historical num- bers. In any case, "the di'er- ence between middle cities is quite slim," he says. For those communities, a small change in, say, „ive-year income growth can make a big di'er- ence in ranking order. By the same standard, where they fetch up on the list won't be the deciding factor for anyone weighing where to move, Miron reckons. "At that point, it's probably a choice between the attributes that we haven't got in the study: the charm of Campbell River, and the fact that Vernon happens to be next to a beautiful ski resort," he says. "But whether or not you want to move there is going to be based more upon personal preference. There's no bad choice." 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 2018 rank 2017 rank commUniTy Fort st. JoHn DaWSON CREEK sQuaMisH tERRaCE PrinCe ruPert KElOWNa ViCtoria NORth VaNCOUVER VanCouVer DElta langley CRaNbROOK best citi for work IN B.C. 2 3 1 6 15 4 16 9 26 10 5 17

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