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Our province will never be the same after the pandemic. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing
Months later, it’s still an eye-popping number. After B.C. went into lockdown to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the province lost 400,000 jobs in March and April. Anyone else miss the good old days of the global financial crisis? Our job losses in the ensuing Great Recession totalled just 70,000 over a nine-month stretch, notes Ken Peacock, chief economist at the Business Council of British Columbia.
In June, the BCBC forecasted that the provincial gross domestic product will shrivel by 7.8 percent this year, versus 2.6 percent during the 2008-09 downturn. As B.C. keeps reopening everything from hair salons to movie sets, Peacock expects a surge in job gains this summer. “We’re not going to get all of those 400,000 back, though, or anything close,” he warns.
