The Government Has to Stop Stifling the Private Sector
The Quebec economy has a problem. There is little job creation in the private sector. Despite the jubilation of certain politicians over the province’s low unemployment numbers, almost all the job creation in Quebec comes from the different levels of government. Worse still, one of the main reasons for our low unemployment rate is the stagnation of the Quebec labour force. When we focus on job creation, Quebec’s performance falls far short.
Since 2018, the number of employees in the public sector has increased by 13%, while the number of employees in the private sector, including the self-employed, fell by 0.05%. Job creation in recent years has happened only in the public sector, and that should worry us all.
With more and more companies faced with a lack of workers, it’s absurd to continue to grow the public sector. The Quebec economy currently has 271,000 positions to fill, and shrinking the number of public sector employees would be one way to start to address the labour shortage. We need to reduce the space the government takes up in Quebec’s economy in order to build a more robust, more innovative economy, and we need to do it now, before it’s too late.