Paul Martin's Business Update August 20th, 2014

This province’s manufacturing sector is cranking out about $1.4 billion worth of goods every month these days. Compared to a year ago that is about ten percentage points higher.

These are significant metrics for an economy that is heavily reliant on the resource sector and constantly looking for ways to add value to our primary products before sending them to market around the world.

The editors at SaskTrends Monitor, the province’s leading tracker of all things statistical, has just completed an analysis of this sector and offers a couple interesting observations.

First, this is a relatively small sector of our economy. As a percentage of the overall economy, only Alberta and Newfoundland are smaller. And on the job front we are last among the provinces when assessing the percentage of jobs in manufacturing compared to all jobs with only 30,000 positions.

The publication adds one further observation: if this sector is going to grow in importance, players in the industry will need to invest more heavily in their plant, equipment and technology in order to compete with low cost Asian players and offset the value of the Canadian dollar.

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