Prince Rupert claims its spot in BC Business Best Cities for work review

Some impressive gains have been found for the North Coast in an annual study by the magazine BC Business, which has placed Prince Rupert in 24th spot out of the thirty six surveyed.

That makes for a significant jump from where the community was placed just one year ago, when Prince Rupert ranked 36 out of the 36 communities surveyed.

The magazine used a range of indicators to come up with its rankings, with such things as income, population and the employment rate making for the final tally.

On those themes BC Business noted the following trends.

Income growth was listed at 22.1%, with average household income listed as $86,685.

The average income for residents 35 and under is $58,959. 

While 12 per cent of the population is listed as holding degrees.

The Population growth numbers from BC Business indicate a decline of 2.1 percent for the community, while the unemployment rate that they based their findings on was listed as 7.7 per cent.

From all of the criteria studied, BC Business determined that the final score for  Prince Rupert was a 51% out of 100.

BC Business has placed Prince Rupert at 24th place
out of 36 communities in the province when it
comes to looking for work

The overall  findings put Prince Rupert one spot ahead of Terrace, which was ranked at Number 25 for this year.  The full reviews for Prince Rupert, Terrace and all communities can be examined here.

When it came to assembling the data, only those communities with a population of over 10,000 were used for the study, with only Prince Rupert and Terrace representing the Northwest.

The most likely place to find employment according to BC Business would be in the Northeast corner of British Columbia with Fort St. John and Dawson Creek listed at first and second for this years survey.

One indicator from the survey process which may affect Prince Rupert's ranking next year however, could be with the employment rate factor,

The data for this years survey was collected in September of 2015, before the announcement in November of some significant job losses set to take place at Canadian Fish, which has announced the closure of its canning lines at the Oceanside plant.

How the community absorbs those job losses and creates new employment opportunities could have some importance to where the community ranks when the 2016 listings come out.

A review of the findings was presented to the Global Morning News last week, you can review that discussion below: