CALGARY – To anybody feeling the impact of the economic downturn, the latest figures released by Statistics Canada are staggering.
On Friday, numbers showed the province added almost 20,000 jobs during the month of March.
READ MORE: Why you can’t trust Canada’s unemployment rate
Some analysts are leery of the rosy picture, but one Calgary dad is proof of some optimism.
Bryan Goehringer went from being his family’s breadwinner to being suddenly unemployed last October – a casualty of the economic slump.
“It was horrifying. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never spent that much time at home and not with a toddler, of all things,” Goehringer said. “New fear gripped me first and then comfort and we started doing stuff together which became a highlight and something I looked forward to every week.”
He took to social media under the hashtag yycdaddy, tweeting and blogging about what other laid-off dads can do with kids on the cheap.
“When you look across the board, and jobs lost, and ratio of men to women, it was very shocking to see… There’s a lot more men out,” Goehringer said. “Being principle breadwinners affects a sense of identity… I realized right away – I need to stay healthy and I need to do things outside and out with people.”
The positivity helped him land a brand new job this week and now he’s back to supporting his family financially, a testament to new job numbers released by StatCan.
“I think, overall, 19,000 jobs added over the course of the month is a good news story for the province. It shows some economic stabilization, that potentially our province is on a path to recovery,” Justin Smith, a policy director for the Calgary Chamber of Commerce said. “There is still a lot of economic headwinds here in Calgary and we saw an increase in that unemployment rate.”
Other analysts caution the optimism, suggesting it’s not an accurate reflection.
“It was a real eyeball-popping job report. Survey research is just an estimate of what’s going on,” ATB economist Todd Hirsch said. “It’s not pin-point accurate and month after month you can see numbers jump up and down erratically. So the takeaway is don’t look too much at one month and draw too many inferences.”
Trends and reports aside, ‘yycdad’ said his job loss has given him a renewed perspective.
The best part, he said, is that his new job gives him the flexibility to still have a lot of spare time with his son.
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