ANITA HUBERMAN
SURREY – The Surrey Board of Trade’s Surrey Labour Market Intelligence Report for June 2024 is released with a special report called: Surrey Business Landscape.
Employment in Surrey in May 2024 was an estimated 3.1% or 10,143 more jobs above employment in May 2023; and over 14,175 or 4.2% more than in May 2022. This is higher than BC’s job growth of 2.5% over the last 12 months (May 2023-May 2024). Over the last 12 months, three of the four top job growth sectors in Surrey were in service-producing industries: health care; manufacturing; professional, scientific, and technical services; and finance, insurance, real estate and leasing. The sectors with the most negative employment change in Surrey over the last 12 months are estimated to be: wholesale and retail trade; accommodation and food services; and natural resource industries.
In this report the Surrey Board of Trade also focused on providing Surrey’s economic development context for what is called Priority 4 of the Surrey Economic Strategy 2024, in which the objective is “to establish a resilient economy, enhance livability for residents as we rapidly grow, and develop each of Surrey’s business communities into vibrant and distinct places.” Some highlights are:
- The number of active business licenses issued by the City of Surrey has steadily increased since 2017 – increasing by 19.2% from 2017 to Q1 2024.
- Since 2017, the split between business licenses issued for home-based businesses compared to those issued for commercial/industrial businesses has hovered near the 50/50 mark, though, home-based businesses have steadily increased from 46.7% in 2017 to surpassing the 50% mark in Q1 2024 at 50.4%.
- Over a quarter of the City of Surrey business licenses that were issued were for construction businesses (at 26%), followed by other service businesses (24%) and then professional, scientific and technical services businesses (12%).
Anita Huberman is the President & CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade
