The newly-released 2010 Squamish Community Profile paints a bright future for local residents despite Statistics Canada's recent findings showing Squamish to have the highest increase in Employment Insurance (EI) in British Columbia.
The 58-page document released Sept. 27 provides a wide variety of statistics and information portraying the District of Squamish as unique from the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) and the rest of the province, and poised for a period of renewed growth.
"Squamish is uniquely positioned to realize economic growth for a number of reasons," said District of Squamish mayor Greg Gardner. "The starting point would be our location.
"This location has attracted a young, educated workforce and is also the reason that our growth projections are high."
Squamish has a younger age profile than the rest of the province, with nearly 60 per cent of its population of 17,000 under the age of 40, compared to the provincial average of about 50 per cent.
A significantly higher percentage of Squamish children are 14 years of age and under compared to the rest of B.C. and the retirement population of nine per cent is well under the provincial average of 15 per cent.
With over half of all Squamish residents aged 15 and up having some type of post-secondary qualification and two local universities in a community of just over 17,000 people, capitalizing on the obvious growth potential is the next step.
Squamish's overall development for the 2005 to 2009 period was predominantly focused in the residential sector - 64.5 per cent of all approved development applications were residential - indicative of the resident population increasing at a rate double the provincial average since 2006.
And while 2009 saw an improvement in the non-residential sectors with new records set in the number of public and commercial development applications approved for large scale projects such as Garibaldi Village phase two and the West Coast Railway Expansion Project, approved industrial development applications fell to zero.
"Right now the bias of the district staff is to avoid industry, and that's manufacturing," said resident Eric Andersen, who has a background in small scale forestry and works as a consultant, doing translation and communications research work for wood building products.
"It is assumed - it's not necessarily town council, it's broad public perceptions too - that we don't need industry, that we can have knowledge-based industry, that we can have tourism," he said.
"The reality is that tourism doesn't pay the bills nor does it pay the wages that we need to support families. This [manufacturing] is a knowledge-based industry. It needs engineers, it need designers it needs marketers. That's what knowledge-based industry is."
According to the profile, nearly one third of Squamish residents work in sales and service while business services and construction rank as the second and third largest employers.
And while investment in knowledge-based industries such as recreational technology and new media is considered key to growing the local economy, it's a trend that can't happen soon enough as far as local resident Danielle Boyes is concerned.
The manager of the Noisy Boyes Music store for the past seven years with a Bachelor of Arts in geography and English and a diploma in business office skills, 31-year-old Boyes will be unemployed when the family run business shuts down in December, adding one more Employment Insurance (EI) claim to local statistics.
"Because the store has been doing so poorly, I have not received a paycheque in almost two months," said Boyes. "And I've been looking in the paper for jobs but most of them are for low minimum wage kind of jobs and as far as my education, I'm too overqualified so chances are I'll be going on EI.
"There are lots of commercial businesses opening up in the Highlands there, so I see a lot of retail jobs but not much for office jobs," she said. "Some of the places I've looked into start you at $8 or $9 an hour but I can't live on $8 or $9 an hour - hopefully there will be more jobs that pay more than minimum wage or I'll have to consider moving out of the area."
When asked to comment on future job prospects for residents currently on EI, Gardner said individuals must make their own decisions about what is best for them and their families. However, he believes the community profile outlines strengths and points to a bright future for job creation in Squamish.
Copies of the profile are available at the municipal hall and a PDF version can be downloaded from businesssquamish.com.
