Numbers released by Statistics Canada on Friday showed a slide in New Brunswick employment in January as the province shed 4,600 full-time jobs and only picked up 3,500 part-time positions.
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At the legislature, the Opposition took aim at the government’s recently tabled budget and what it could mean going forward.
“Given the policies they’ve made on natural resource development, on increasing business property tax and now an increase to the corporate tax rate, you can see that the decisions that they’ve made are making the situation worse not better,” said Opposition Leader Bruce Fitch.
Susan Hold, the chief of business relationships for the New Brunswick Jobs Board. said decreasing job numbers aren’t ideal, but monthly reports can be misleading.
“Month-over-month numbers have a lot of fluctuation, so you’ll notice that we lost a number of them this month, but if you look last month we gained,” she said.
Premier Brian Gallant’s Liberal government made job creation a high priority during the 2014 provincial election, setting lofty goals such as adding 5,000 jobs to the province.
After nearly losing that many positions in full-time work over the past month, the Opposition won’t likely sit idle if the numbers don’t improve.
“Make sure the policies the government put forward, such as an increase in tax to corporate or HST, don’t kill the jobs as opposed to trying to create the jobs,” said Fitch.