Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Nearly 600,000 Canadian Jobs Would be Lost With Collapse of Big Three: Report

(CBC News)

Canada would lose nearly 600,000 jobs within five years if the Big Three automakers completely shut down, according to a report prepared for the Ontario Manufacturing Council, an advisory panel of industry and labour representatives.

The 11-page report, which was prepared by the Centre for Spatial Economics, projects a bleak economic picture for the province and the rest of the country if the automakers went out of business.

Effects on employment would be felt right away, the report states, with Canada losing 323,000 jobs if production ceased immediately, 281,800 in Ontario alone, the report forecasts. Those figures would climb in five years to 582,000 jobs nationally in 2014, 517,000 of those in Ontario.

A cut in production by 50 per cent would eliminate 157,400 jobs nationally immediately, 141,000 in Ontario. By 2014, 296,000 jobs would be lost, 269,000 in Ontario.

The depreciation of the dollar, lower interest rates and lower production costs eventually help the economy to partially recover but the loss of the Detroit Three leaves a permanent dent in Canada's economy in terms of jobs and output, the document says. Read more here and view the report here (PDF).