Beyond jobs and growth: Using economic projections to inform planning

Keenan - Economic Development Specialist

Keenan is an economic development specialist who has worked extensively analysing and developing economic programs, strategies and policies to help local communities. Keenan works with our local government clients to help them explore and understand how their regions are changing over time to help them make better decisions and create evidence-based strategies related to local economic development.

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4 Responses

  1. This is probably a dumb question, but why is it a “jobs deficit” if local people are gainfully employed outside of their local area? Isn’t unemployment a better measure? Otherwise don’t you get a perverse result of the jobs deficit going down (ie sounds like a good thing) when outside jobs decline (ie presumably unemployment rising)??

    • Keenan Jackson says:

      Good question Alison. We refer to jobs deficit (the alternative is jobs surplus) in this blog because a key outcome for many councils is to generate more jobs in their local area, thus reducing congestion and negative lifestyle effects stemming from long commutes. Unemployment of course is an important measure of the welfare of local residents. However, reducing jobs deficits by creating more local jobs can improve equity and welfare outcomes as not everyone commutes by choice. You are absolutely correct that if there was a situation where jobs declined outside the region, then the jobs deficit may fall but unemployment could theoretically rise. This is not necessarily a perverse situation but more a reinforcement that no indicator should be looked at in isolation. Unemployment itself is quite a poor indicator on its own, for example if a large amount of people gave up looking for work the unemployment level would actually fall. Looking at multiple indicators to generate a complete picture of a region is always worthwhile.

  2. Alison Dalziel says:

    Good points Keenan. Thanks for the response. Probably also depends on the boundaries in question as perfectly valid “local” employment may fall within another local government area.

  1. December 7, 2016

    […] Beyond jobs and growth: Using economic projections to inform planning […]

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