Regional Unemployment Differences In Canada

The other day, I noted that in bi- or multilingual countries in Europe like Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Finland regions that were dominated by Germanic languages Dutch, German and Swedish  had far lower unemployment rates than those dominated by non-Germanic languages Italian, French and Finnish.

I now checked whether this held true in Canada, which though located in North America is also bilingual with one Germanic language, English, and one non-Germanic, French. It turns out that the link is far weaker, almost non-existent there.

While Canada's one majority French province, Quebec, had higher unemployment than the Canadian average, the difference was very small, 7.7% versus 7.2%. The other province with a significant French population, New Brunswick (33% French) had higher unemployment at 9.5%, but that is in fact lower than the other Atlantic provinces, New Foundland and Labrador, Prince Edward's Island and Nova Scotia.

The biggest differences instead exists between different English speaking provinces. The three "Mid Western" provinces Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have unemployment rates around 5%, the three big states British Columbia, Ontario and French speaking Quabec have unemployment rates of 6.5% to 8% while the four Atlantic provinces have the highest unemployment rates, about 9.5% in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. about 11% in Prince Edward's Island and 13% in New Foundland and Labrador.