
The BC Business Council ranks the province 11th out of 21 comparable jurisdictions when it comes to overall prosperity.
The data-supported index examined British Columbia’s performance on key measures of business, economic and social well-being. Comparable jurisdictions included the other 9 provinces, Washington, Oregon and California, Australia, New Zealand, France, the UK and Germany.
When talking specifically about the business environment, Chief Economist Ken Peacock says we rank 4th out of 21 in education, but not so well in the other three indicators. “One that’s particularly problematic for us is labour productivity. So, if you look at how efficient we are in output per hour worked, how efficient we use our resources and our machining equipment and what not, that’s called labour productivity. And when we compare ourselves to other jurisdictions we come in 14th.”
Peacock adds there is a big spread between jurisdictions. “California for example, is almost twice as productive on an economy wide measure as the BC economy is. California economy highly productive. Same with Washington state. So you get this big spread on that indicator.” BC also didn’t do so well in Research and Development. “Spending [on research and development] relative to the size of the economy, 13th of 21. So… there’s a big spread in the numbers and BC ranks relatively low. Then when you get down to the education one, BC ranks high, but all of the jurisdictions are clustered together. So we don’t get much of a big lift when the index is calculated from that.”