But dig beneath that press release and two interesting facts emerges: First, Alberta s miraculous jo

On a sunny, warm June day, dozens of businessmen travel packages to sydney australia and academic elite gathered inside a cavernous conference room at Calgary s downtown Westin hotel. The focus of the two-day conference: commodities, travel packages to sydney australia the economy and money. Keynote travel packages to sydney australia speakers included chief economists from Canadian and foreign banks, a former advisor to the U.S. president and the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada.
Kickstarting the affair was an 8 a.m. session with Bank of Canada deputy governor John Murray and veteran Calgary businessman Dick Haskayne titled, Didn t see it coming... or did we? A retrospective of 2008-09.
The Coles Notes version of the 30-minute talk would read as such: In hindsight, we should have seen the worst postwar financial crisis coming. But we didn t. Mulligan? Reassuring retrospection. Less comforting was the economic forecast.
The situation then is eerily travel packages to sydney australia similar to today, Murray told the crowd. In the interim, of course, we have gone through a great deal. This is not to suggest travel packages to sydney australia noting travel packages to sydney australia the similarities between then, 2008, and now, that history is necessarily prologue. travel packages to sydney australia If it were life... travel packages to sydney australia it would certainly be more predictable travel packages to sydney australia and what we know is not predictable.
Apparently. In fact, almost four years after the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown triggered a global economic crisis in October 2008 and two years after the recession officially ended few experts seem willing to invest much on the course ahead. At this point, cash is king.
Yet some experts have been painting a rosy forecast of Canada s fortunes since the recession was proclaimed officially over in July 2009. In Alberta, the phrase economic boom has wormed its way back into the lexicon as local news outlets pump out boosterish reports about increased sales of high-price wine and European cars.
But other economists travel packages to sydney australia are offering more sober analysis. The U.S. may not be heading for another recession, but a depression. European countries, such as Greece, travel packages to sydney australia Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy could be facing bankruptcy, enduring double-digit unemployment and rioting by disenfranchised citizens.
We are still walking around three years after it started and we re wondering if it s going to go again, travel packages to sydney australia says Armine Yalnizyan, senior economist for the Canadian Centre travel packages to sydney australia for Policy Alternatives. It s kind of amazing that we re so unsure. It s so fragile that we re not sure if it s going to blow again.
Here s what we do know. Like a whoozy boxer, the U.S. economy is still reeling and on the ropes. American politicians are playing, well, politics, as the country inches closer to defaulting on its self-imposed debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion (that s $14,300,000,000,000).
Meanwhile, official unemployment in the U.S. is hovering around nine per cent. Real unemployment is closer to 14 per cent 25 per cent in some pockets throughout the country. One-in-four unemployed have been jobless for more than a year. Nine million homes have been foreclosed since the calamity began; another two million face foreclosure this year. America travel packages to sydney australia s AAA credit rating risks being downgraded. And a Goldman Sachs economist who predicted the collapse in 2007 now says another recession is clearly a possibility.
Large U.S. corporations, to the delight of shareholders, are raking in profits at a time when 25 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed. This, says Hale, is the most dramatic gain in U.S. corporate profit to ever occur since the Second World War. That gain was largely achieved by slashing millions of U.S. jobs, investing overseas and sitting on piles of cash.
If this had been a more traditional recovery we would now have an unemployment rate closer to eight per cent, Hale says. But getting to that relatively sunny benchmark, he adds, will require some good luck with the U.S. housing market and business confidence.
So, why should Canadians, Albertans or Calgarians care about the U.S. economy? Like it or not, the American economy has a huge effect on us. After all, Uncle Sam is still, by a wide margin, Canada s No. 1 trading travel packages to sydney australia partner, accounting for almost 70 per cent of our exports.
If the U.S. sneezes, Canada could catch a cold, is the phrase that s been used often times, says Robert Schulz, a professor of strategic management at the University of Calgary s Haskayne School of Business.
Many Americans, as well as Canadians, don t recognize the magnitude of the problems travel packages to sydney australia facing the U.S. and the inevitable spillover effect, says Schulz. People don t worry about the danger, he says. They just worry about the upside. It s somebody else s problem, travel packages to sydney australia they ll fix it, they ve fixed it before, it s not my job so I m not worried about it. That s the way many people think.
What were Canadians thinking before the recession hit in 2008? Well, in September 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said: My own belief is if we were going to have some sort of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now. And Harper s background is in economics.
travel packages to sydney australia Meanwhile, local economists, such as the University of Calgary s Frank Atkins, accused pessimists for spurring on the recession. If you convince people that the doom and gloom is there, they ll act like the doom and gloom is there, travel packages to sydney australia Atkins told a local newspaper in early October 2008. Things are not as bad as we re being led to believe.
Right. In the ensuing months more than 425,000 Canadians lost their jobs, including 73,600 Albertans. In response, the federal Conservative government unleashed $47 billion in stimulus programs, which helped prop up the economy for a while, but that support is quickly winding down.
Since the Canadian economy bottomed out in July 2009, jobs have returned to pre-recession levels. But that recovery is mainly due to government intervention, says Sylvain Schetagre, senior economist for the Canadian Labour Congress. We re still talking about 70 per cent of jobs being concentrated to industries that are related to government travel packages to sydney australia monetary and fiscal policies, he says. And part-time work accounted for a significant component of the Canadian job recovery, he adds. The rate of part-timers went up to 20 per cent during the recession. In other words, one-in-five of the jobs created in the past two years is part time.
Canada s unemployment officially stands at 7.4 per cent. But if one factors in discouraged workers and part-timers looking for full-time work, Canada s unemployment hits double-digit territory, about 11 per cent.
Alberta, along with Ontario and B.C., was hit particularly hard during travel packages to sydney australia the recession, losing a total of 73,600 jobs between October 2008 and July 2009. According to a recent Alberta government press release, the province has recouped all the jobs that were lost during the recession.
But dig beneath that press release and two interesting facts emerges: First, Alberta s miraculous job recovery amounts to a paltry net gain of 3,200 jobs in the past three years. Second, the recovery is almost entirely propped up by the health care and social assistance sectors.
In fact, according to Statistics travel packages to sydney australia Canada figures, almost 97 per cent of Alberta s job recovery can be attributed to three sectors: health travel packages to sydney australia care and social assistance with 42,400 jobs; information, culture and recreation accounting for 11,300 jobs; and accommodation and food services creating 10,500 travel packages to sydney australia jobs. Two years after the recession officially ended, almost every other job sector in Alberta has, in fact, lost jobs, and for some industries travel packages to sydney australia quite dramatically.
Studying the numbers more closely, one quickly realizes the growth in the social assistance sector parallels another fact: In the 2008-09 and 2010-11 fiscal years, income support caseloads in Alberta soared by 30 per cent peaking in March 2009 at 40,000. The climb down has been much slower. Currently, about 38,000 Albertans require some form of income support to meet their basic needs.
Meanwhile, Alberta leads the country in mortgage arrears (not making travel packages to sydney australia mortgage payments for three consecutive months or more), almost travel packages to sydney australia doubling the national average. During the boom there was a bit of a frenzy to get in or, I m going to miss this opportunity, says Ann-Marie Lurie, senior economist for the Calgary Real Estate Board. And it causes people to not make their best financial decisions.
No kidding. travel packages to sydney australia If you were one of the 30,000 Calgarians who purchased a single-family home or condominium during Calgary s real estate boom in 2007, there s a very good chance you re home is worth far less now than when you bought it. Median prices for single-family homes and condos have yet to recover from their frenzied highs.
Meanwhile, TD Bank is forecasting home prices across the country to decline by 10 per cent in the next two years Calgary homes are predicted to drop 6.4 per cent, with Vancouver topping the chart at 14.8 per cent. A separate presentation by TD economist Derek Burleton deems Alberta s housing as overvalued.
There s nothing that s pointing to any significant travel packages to sydney australia price declines, travel packages to sydney australia she says. I would be concerned if we had out migration or if employment levels were still really low, but we re seeing positive growth in employment and migration.
So, why should we care about unemployment and real estate stats? Unemployment travel packages to sydney australia is the key indicator to a sick or recovering economy. And our homes in the past decade have become incredibly expensive, with many new homeowners paying more than 50 per cent of their paycheques travel packages to sydney australia toward their mortgages.
According to the Bank of Canada, the average price of a house in Canada is now 4.5 times the average disposable income. Our debt-to-income ratio is 147 per cent, meaning travel packages to sydney australia for every dollar earned, Canadian households owe $1.47. The Certified General Accountants Association of Canada says Canadian households currently owe $1.5 trillion.
Carney, who has repeatedly sounded the alarm about escalating household debt levels, says the number of Canadian households is highly vulnerable to an adverse economic shock as it has hit its highest level in almost a decade despite improving economic conditions and the ongoing lo