The BC Liberals have falsely claimed that Statistics Canada numbers show that there are fewer people working in hospitals since before the pandemic.
The 10,000 workers referenced by the BC Liberals reflects an adjustment in how Statistics Canada classifies the data and not an actual change in employment.
Between June and July 2020, Statistics Canada reclassified their data to remove 7,391 workers from the “Hospitals” category and add them to the “Outpatient Care Centres Grouping” (light blue highlight).
Statistics Canada Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours, 2020
| Setting | 20-Jan | 20-Feb | 20-Mar | 20-Apr | 20-May | 20-Jun | 20-Jul | 20-Aug | 20-Sep | 20-Oct | 20-Nov | 20-Dec | … | 22-Feb |
| Ambulatory health care services | 86,281 | 85,394 | 80,665 | 63,957 | 65,157 | 74,841 | 88,207 | 90,902 | 92,188 | 93,685 | 95,306 | 97,277 | … | 102,264 |
| Out-patient care centres | 16,054 | 15,759 | 15,669 | 15,082 | 14,639 | 14,335 | 21,638 | 23,091 | 23,234 | 23,935 | 24,052 | 24,477 | … | 24,114 |
| Hospitals | 88,281 | 86,856 | 87,000 | 83,942 | 82,739 | 84,534 | 77,143 | 75,815 | 75,770 | 77,819 | 78,078 | 79,197 | … | 78,419 |
| TOTAL | 190,616 | 188,009 | 183,334 | 162,981 | 162,535 | 173,710 | 186,988 | 189,808 | 191,192 | 195,439 | 197,436 | 200,951 | 204,797 |
Despite being reclassified by StatCan, these workers are doing the same jobs. The BC Liberals have manipulated the StatCan data by only using the category from which workers were removed.
Under the new groupings, both Hospital and Outpatient Care Centre employment has grown in the intervening months to February 2022. In fact, StatCan data shows BC experienced the highest growth in health employment of any of the provinces between 2020 and 2021.