N.S. grads prosper, report says
NovaKnowledge survey confirms career opportunities in province

By Bruce Erskine, Business Reporter

Contrary to popular belief, Nova Scotia university graduates don't have to go down the road to get good jobs, says NovaKnowledge's sixth annual knowledge economy report card.

"This is a real myth buster, because we do see a lot of talk and a lot of press about people having to move away, what we used to call in the old days going down the road," David Quinlivan-Hall, chairman of the 2003 report card editorial committee, told the media on Monday.

NovaKnowledge is a non-profit group representing business, government, academia and the community that is dedicated to the development of a sustainable provincial knowledge economy.

The report card, based on input from 30 private and public sector organizations, found that 78 per cent of Nova Scotians with a university degree have jobs - slightly above the national average - and that people with university degrees earn twice as much as high school graduates.

Those figures, the report says, counter a perception that career opportunities for university graduates in Nova Scotia aren't as good as they are in other parts of the country.

Forty-two per cent of those polled on the question said that career opportunities for university graduates in Nova Scotia were less than in other parts of the country, while only 17 per cent thought they were better.

The report card, which touches on a number of factors affecting the province's economy, found that while Nova Scotia is one of Canada's leaders in business start-ups - which account for 19 per cent of all businesses operating in the province - an equal number of firms go out of business.

"This, coupled with the lack of venture capital, points to the need for further investigation into our ability to sustain and grow business over time," said Mr. Quinlivan-Hall. "We don't have any answers here, but we sure have a lot of interesting questions."

Mr. Quinlivan-Hall said the dearth of venture capital investment in the province is a "major concern" that is holding back economic growth.

"We might look more closely at ways of redressing the outflow of investment capital from our region," he said, noting that there are other forms of investment capital available, such as going public.

Nova Scotia businesses continue to invest in technology, with spending in 2002 at 8.6 per cent of GDP, compared with eight per cent nationally, the report found.

But the province ranks low in productivity - in part because of the nature of its economy, which is more labour-intensive than capital-intensive.

"Labour productivity is closely linked to the amount of capital investment in plant, technology and equipment," Mr. Quinlivan-Hall said. "It becomes a challenge for us - how do we get those high-capital, high-wage industries operating here?"

Canada is creating more low- than high-income jobs, at about a 2-1 ratio, the report said, but the ratio in Nova Scotia is much higher, 10-1. NovaKnowledge said that trend has been driven by a reduction in public sector jobs, which represent 22 per cent of employment in Nova Scotia, the loss of well-paying coal and steel industry jobs and a consolidation of financial services jobs in Central Canada.

Nova Scotia's export sector also lags behind that of most of the rest of the country, with provincial exports accounting for less than 30 per cent of GDP, compared with 40 per cent nationally.

"We have grown in the past decade from 20 to 29 per cent - good news - but growth has been slower than in the rest of Canada," said Mr. Quinlivan-Hall.

The report card is sponsored by the provincial Economic Development Office, among others.