Auto sector's electric shift drives bright economic outlook for Windsor region: report

The Conference Board of Canada is predicting a bright future for the economy of the Windsor region.

Ted Mallett, director of economic forecasting at the Conference Board of Canada, said the region has the "strongest growth" of any municipality over the next four to five years of all the cities the organization looks at.

"The strength of the automotive sector and the retooling that's necessary and converting to the electrical vehicle process will really help power the economy," he said.

"By helping secure the future of production it also generates confidence in other industries and basically as well for the consumer sector to continue to provide retail services as well as expand the tourism sector, hospitality sector."

While investments at the Windsor Assembly Plant to gear up for electric vehicles, and Stellantis-LG's electric-vehicle battery plant headline a lot of the gains, Mallett said the Gordie Howe International Bridge construction has also brought workers to Windsor, and once completed, further boosts the economic outlook.

"There's a lot of talented skilled workers that are working on that project," said Justin Falconer, CEO for Workforce Windsor-Essex, adding the planned expansion of Windsor Regional Hospital, along with the work at automotive facilities bolsters the economic forecast.

"I think the construction sector for the last decade has performed really well and hopefully will continue to perform well."

Adding jobs

Falconer said in the past six months, 26,000 net-new jobs have been added to the local economy and more could be coming.

"Manufacturing as well as construction and certainly there's going to be a lot of indirect employment spinoff benefit that's happening as well," he said.

"Transportation logistics and sort of like even a bunch of retail professional services I think will all have wind in their sails going into 2023 and into 2024 as a result of some of these large scale investments. So very good news for our region."

The manufacturing sector is also transforming, he said, and might bring more benefits for future generations in the region.

"We thought our parents had great opportunities because they could walk right out of high school and into the job at an assembly plant here locally," he said.

"But the jobs we're seeing now with, sort of, the new focus on technology and electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles and connectivity, like we're seeing engineering jobs and sort of like, you know, a new generation of sort of like great white collar jobs that will be available to our kids."

Unemployment remains high

Mallett said that in comparison to other municipalities in Ontario, Windsor's unemployment rate was still quite high.

But he said with so much potential for growth, people looking for work is a good thing.

"Other areas that may have very low unemployment rates, it may be tougher for employers to actually find the people they need to service their businesses," he said.

"Because Windsor does have a relatively high unemployment rate, you know, the growth potentials are in fact better in the area and that's how we've kind of brought that into our forecast."