ON FRIDAY, StatsCan released its monthly labour force survey for April, showing the unemployment rate had fallen to 6.8%, the best it's been since December, 2000. For reasons that are explained here, I think the employment rate -- the number of employed as a percentage, not of the labour force (those who say they are available for work) but of the working-age population -- is the better measure of the state of the labour market. And while the news is good there, too -- at 61.9%, it is not far off its all-time high -- I was struck by the inter-provincial comparisons. We all know that the unemployment rate in Newfoundland, and the Atlantic provinces generally, is much higher than it is in other parts of the country, especially in the West. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate in Newfoundland last month was 16.1%; in Alberta it was 4.0%. That's a difference of 12.1 percentage points. But now compare the two provinces' employment rates: 49.3% versus 70.2%, or a gap of nearly 21 percentage points. This is astonishing. In Newfoundland, fewer than one in two people over the age of 14 is employed. In Alberta, nearly three in four are. If you leave out the seasonal adjustment, the gap is even wider: 46.5% to 69.2%. (Newfoundland and Alberta are, admittedly, the outriders: everyone else is bunched between 57.5% and 64.9%, seasonally adjusted.) So the question is not just, why are so many more willing workers unable to find employment in Newfoundland, but why are so few Newfoundlanders available for work? The participation rate -- labour force as a percentage of working-age population -- in Newfoundland is just 58.8%, 11 points lower than the employment rate in Alberta. Demography is obviously part of it: the proportion of the population of working age is somewhat larger in Alberta than in Newfoundland. And social factors no doubt also come into play: I'm guessing there are more stay-at-home moms in a tradition-based society like Newfoundland than in footloose Alberta. But is that all there is to it? Never mind Alberta. Why is Newfoundland's participation and employment rate so much lower than, say, PEI's? NOTE: I mean no disrespect to Newfoundlanders by asking this, and I don't want any sneering comments about Newfoundlanders' work ethic. It's just a puzzle, to me at least. UPDATE: Okay, we can discount demographics as a factor. I've just checked: the proportion of the population aged 15-64 is actually higher in Newfoundland than it is in Alberta -- 71.2% to 70.2%. Granted, Newfoundland has a slightly higher proportion of 65-and-ups than Alberta, but that's not enough to explain the gap in participation rates on its own. UPPERDATE: And it isn't all those stay-at-home moms, either. While women have a lower participation rate in Newfoundland than in other provinces, so do the men. BACKGROUNDDATE: A comparison of Canada and the US: Unemployment rate: Canada 6.8% US 5.2% Employment rate: Canada 61.9% US 62.6% Participation rate: Canada 67.2% US 66.0% Surprisingly, Canada has a higher participation rate than the US. So even though we have a gap of 1.6 percentage points in our unemployment rates, the gap in employment rates is much narrower.