On June 1st the Vancouver Sun carried the front page headline "Shoppers help B.C. economy grow at a sizzling pace". It is strange that a daily newspaper would headline and misinterpret data released by Statistics Canada a week earlier on May 25th.

It is true that the retail sales showed a remarkable jump in March, but everything else in the Vancouver Sun's story was pure speculation. A one month increase in retail sales certainly does not mean that the economy is growing, let alone at a sizzling pace. Since January employment in BC has fallen by 34.5 thousand on a seasonally adjusted basis (down 8.2 thousand on an unadjusted basis). On Friday, June 4th, the labour force survey numbers will be released for May. Will the prominence given by the Vancouver Sun to those numbers depend on whether they are good or bad news?

The graph shown here displays the growth rate for retail trade in BC from January 2002 through March 2004. Statistics Canada notes that the March figure is "preliminary" and subject to revision. Hopefully it will not be revised downward as it shows that after more than a year of falling growth, the jump in March returned retail trade growth to the level experienced in early 2002. The Ministry of Finance is not optimistic that a 7% growth rate can be sustained. When Finance Minister Gary Collins presented his budget in February he assumed that retail sales would grow at an annual rate of 4.4% in 2004 and increase to 4.9% in 2005 before declining slightly in subsequent years. Credit Union Central of BC is a little more optimistic. Its article on the March 2004 retail trade statistics went on to predict that retail trade would grow by 5% in 2004. That would be a healthy growth rate for retail trade but far short of what the Sun's headline called "sizzling", and it may not indicate anything about overall economic growth.