Overall, the province's population declined by 4,584 between October 1 2005 and October 1, 2006 going from slightly over 513,000 to slightly under 509,000.
In January 2007, Bond Papers published a chart [Above. Source: Bond Papers] comparing outmigration by quarter.The third quarter of 2006 was the highest quarterly period of outmigration for the province since 1993.
Outmigration; typically caused in Newfoundland and Labrador by a lack of jobs, not by, as Danny Williams claimed recently, by young people having big debts coming out of their education. Young people in Alberta with huge education debts don't head for Nova Scotia. Nope. They stay at home where the big jobs are.
Take a look at this chart on migration by level of education, taken from a slide presentation your humble e-scribbler sat through about a decade ago. You don't need to blow the thing up - although you can by clicking on it - to see that pink line. It represents people with university degrees. In each of the four periods, starting with the five years between 1976 and 1981, the pink people have left the province in droves substantially beyond other educational cohorts.Their leaving was not stimulated by the crushing load of debt they carried. In relative terms, debt in the early period of that slide was lighter than student debt today. In the later periods it might have been on par - relative to salaries.
In just three years, the Newfoundland and Labrador economy has gone from leading the nation to heading for the bottom of the pile. Economic growth in Newfoundland and Labrador will be pedestrian come 2008.
Just like it was in the 1970s and 1980s.
The huge difference between now and then is that then there simply weren't the opportunities. We dreamed about opportunities as we loaded up the car to head to Ontario or British Columbia or Alberta where there were jobs. We made some good deals along the way, when there were deals to be had. We walked away from a few too, like with Quebec in the early 1990s.
In 2006, we had opportunities; solid opportunities with good financial deals tagged along. The stuff we used to dream about. And then someone started shutting everything down, Hebron and Hibernia South.
Deliberately.
Opportunities get missed, like with Labrador West and Consolidated Thompson.
So, outmigration heads back up to levels not seen since the collapse of the cod fishery.
Should we be surprised?