His preferred tools to measure a city: employment rate, median wages (average wage is skewed by what Geobey calls the “nosebleed” salaries of the super-rich) and gross domestic product (GDP). When you factor in Toronto’s soaring youth unemployment number - 23 per cent, according to the city's website - Geobey said he’s not so sure the city’s booming. “I think intensification is overall a positive,” Geobey said, “but it’s not necessarily balanced, equitable or sustainable growth.” It's not necessarily balanced, equitable or sustainable growth.
“It tells us that there is a lot of speculative investment in real estate in the core,” he said. Sean Geobey, a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, said the number of new buildings can reflect several other aspects of Toronto. And new buildings create new opportunities for nearby businesses.Įconomists, however, prefer to work with the bigger picture. The people who eventually live in those condos pay property tax. Developers pay the city for permits for each new building. Still, there are plenty of reasons for Rob Ford to love cranes.
Toronto’s population is steadily climbing, Kavcic said, but the city's unemployment rate of about nine per cent is high compared to cities in Western Canada. So how’s Toronto doing? Kavcic said he considers the city’s economy pretty solid, but not booming like Calgary and Edmonton. “The two most telling things would be population growth and the unemployment rate,” Kavcic said. Rob Ford says each new crane creates 1,000 jobs, but the organization that tracks development in the Greater Toronto Area suggests the actual number is less than half of that. Robert Kavcic, a senior economist with BMO, said using cranes as an economic indicator “probably has some value,” but said it’s far from the “be all, end all.”
Toronto's economy solid but not booming: BMO economist While new building construction does employ people, Nakamoto said it’s hard to tell exactly what types of jobs they create - highly-skilled or low-skilled, permanent or part-time. “I think a better measure is job growth,” he said. Watch Metro Morning's interview with Rob FordĮconomist Ian Nakamoto, a Toronto-based research director at wealth management firm MacDougall, MacDougall & MacTier Inc., said Ford's tower boasts are "somewhat fair," but said other factors should be considered when measuring the economy.“We like to say that one crane equals between 300 and 500 jobs,” said Andrei Zaretski, BILD’s media relations manager. The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), which monitors developments across the GTA, has a different number. “When you see 150 cranes in the sky, every crane is equivalent to 1,000 jobs,” said Ford.