Today, the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority (SREDA) launched a new economic tool, the Saskatoon Economic Recovery Tracker (SERT). SERT measures the state of economic recovery for the Saskatoon Region based on a comparison of ten key economic indicators prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and what they are today. The tool calculates a percentage recovered for each indicator, which are assigned weightings, which in turn contributes to a total percentage recovered for the Saskatoon Region.
Based on this model, the Saskatoon Region economy is 48.2 percent recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels.
“The Saskatoon Economic Recovery Tracker provides a good gage of the health of the overall economy, and provides insight into the areas we need to support in order to get back to pre-COVID-19 levels,” said Alex Fallon, President and CEO, SREDA. “Currently we are less than half way recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels at 48.2%, showing some progress on our way to recovery.”
The indicators show provincial GDP has been greatly impacted since the pandemic started with GDP at 27.4 percent recovered. In terms of employment, the Saskatoon Region is 70.9 percent recovered with unemployment and participation rate at 78.9 percent and 40.0 percent recovered, respectively.
The construction sector is a bit more than half way recovered at 56.1 percent. This percentage includes residential and non-residential investment. It is no surprise the hospitality sector has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hotel occupancy and airport passenger traffic at 58.8 percent and 18.7 percent recovered, respectively. Businesses have also been greatly impacted, with active businesses 22.4 percent recovered.
“We don’t know how long it is going to take, but we do know, at some point, the Saskatoon Region economy will recover to pre-COVID-19 levels. The Saskatoon Economic Recovery Tracker will help us monitor the progress and provide understanding of the different areas of the economy that contribute to recovery,” said Fallon.
The data used in SERT is from a variety of sources including Statistics Canada, Conference Board of Canada, the International Monetary Fund and industry associations. Each indicator has its own recovery percentage, which is then weighted to achieve a total recovery percentage for the economy.
