Barrie’s unemployment rate dropped to five per cent in January, down from 5.2 per cent in December, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent labour force survey that was released Friday.
“What we’ve seen, in short, is a lot more people in Barrie finding jobs,” Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman told Global News.
“In 2019, we saw more jobs being created in the city of Barrie, and we saw more people in Barrie finding those jobs.”
According to Lehman, the manufacturing sector in Barrie has experienced significant growth.
“Our local manufacturers have been hiring, and that fits with what we at the city have seen from some of our largest employers,” Lehman said, adding the health and social services and professional scientific and technical services sectors have also grown.
Over the last 10 years, Barrie’s unemployment rate has fluctuated, with it standing at 8.1 per cent in January 2010.
“One of the good news stories of the last decade economically in Barrie is we saw sectors that weren’t here before just grow up overnight,” Lehman said.
“We have three major data centres here in Barrie that now employ something like 600 or 700 people.”
Georgian College has been a huge piece of Barrie’s story over the last decade, Lehman said.
“Georgian College has added programs in everything from electrical engineering to machining to big data,” he added. “Those are employment programs that train employees to the new economy.”
In the future, Lehman said he doesn’t see Barrie as a bedroom community.