Carrie Schroeder considers herself one of the lucky ones.
A former line worker at Ford Motor Co.'s Windsor engine plant, Ms. Schroeder has suffered two layoffs in two years, and the stress of worrying about the job security of her mother and husband, both of whom still work at Ford. That stress multiplied yesterday with the announcement of thousands more North American layoffs at Chrysler LLC.
"Right now there are jobs going for $12 an hour and people are jumping at them," said Ms. Schroeder, who says she considers herself fortunate to have landed a job she loves at a Windsor charity - albeit for half the wage she earned at Ford.
Yet in the middle of the worst industry downturn in her lifetime, Ms. Schroeder is not the Canadian norm.
In the two years since Ms. Schroeder's first layoff from Ford, 140,000 jobs were lost from the Canadian manufacturing sector.
But during the same period, 714,000 net jobs were added to the work force, according to data from Toronto Dominion Bank.
"It's not a western phenomena limited to workers shortages in oil booms. The labour market across the country is quite tight.
"What's more, the bulk of that is coming in sectors that are going to create full-time jobs and good pay," said Craig Alexander, the bank's deputy chief economist.
Mr. Alexander said that contrary to popular opinion, those jobs aren't all in the oil patch, nor are they primarily for unskilled workers.
In fact, 400,000 of the new jobs created in Canada in the two-year period starting in September 2005 were in areas including finance, real estate, health care and public administration, all of which offer strong career prospects.
The job boom has left many parts of the country untouched.
Slews of job cuts in Big Three-dependent cities such as Windsor, Oshawa, Ont., and Ingersoll, Ont. are creating pockets of recessionary conditions, a striking contrast to other parts of Canada where unemployment is at a 33-year-low, Mr. Alexander said.
"What we're seeing is a real dichotomy in terms of the Canadian labour market. At the same time that manufacturing has lost 60,000 jobs in Ontario since 2002, we also have a time when the unemployment rate has fallen to a generational low."
However, the concentration of these jobs in some geographic areas while manufacturing is centred in others has created a sharp divide between the fortunes of different cities that isn't easily remedied, Mr. Alexander said.
Sudbury, Ont., for example, is booming due to record nickel prices, while lumber producer Thunder Bay, Ont. is being hit hard by a downturn in demand caused by the housing crisis in the U.S.
Any city with a heavy dependence on manufacturing, exporting goods to the U.S., and subsequently a vulnerability to the soaring Canadian dollar is likely to be suffering.
Despite the country's wealth of employment opportunities, they can be extremely difficult to access for workers that have lost manufacturing sector jobs, Mr. Alexander said.
"For workers that are laid off this is a traumatic event and it creates severe challenges. You don't want to minimize the challenges that individuals face, even when it happens at a time when unemployment is at a 33-year low. It can be extremely difficult," Mr. Alexander said.
Even with retraining and support while they look for new jobs, many are daunted at the prospect of uprooting in search of new opportunities, as Ms. Schroeder's stepdaughter did recently when she left Windsor for Edmonton.
Those who try to transfer from one manufacturing sector job to another rather than making a career change can end up finding themselves back in the same boat in their new city. This happened to a number of General Motors workers who moved from St. Catharines, Ont., to Oshawa, Ont. after a round of cuts from 1999 to 2001, only to find themselves out of work again.
With a tenuous stability in hers and her husband's jobs, Ms. Schroeder has no intention of leaving Windsor, but she worries about what the future holds for her children.
"My 17-year-old is going through a course where they tell them, 'Just so you know, there are no jobs.' For my nine-year-old I want to be able to buy a few things to enjoy together instead of living paycheque to paycheque, but that's just reality right now."
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