Economy
Total employment for Lambton County (including the City of Sarnia) is 66,370. Of those 9,760 (14.7%) are employed in manufacturing; 7,545 (11.4%) in retail trade; 5,080 (7.7%) in accommodation and food services; and 3,155 (4.8%) are employed in agriculture.
Petrochemical and refining is the largest manufacturing sector in Lambton County's economy. Established during World War II, Sarnia and the area along the St. Clair River is home to a major processing centre for oil from Alberta.
In late 2010 and early 2011 a number of companies announced plans to provide ethane from the Marcellus Shale in the USA to Lambton County industries; providing a potential new feedstock for the production of ethylene in Lambton County.
Lambton County is the site of North America's first drilled commercial oil well at Oil Springs in 1858.
Tourism is another important industry in Lambton County, especially along the lake and river. The community of Grand Bend, and the Pinery Provincial Park are especially popular tourist destinations, attracting thousands of people each week throughout the summer to their long, uninterrupted beaches. The part of Lambton County along Lake Huron known as Lambton Shores depends almost entirely upon the seasonal industries of tourism and agriculture for its well-being. There are also popular conservation areas along the St. Clair River, and a conservation area named Rock Glen Falls near Arkona along the Ausauble River internationally known for its Devonian Era fossils.
Lambton County has 2,346 farms with a total of 592,793 acres. The largest single use of farmland in Lambton is crop production,with 85% of total farmland reported as land in crops. Over the last 20 years soybeans, wheat, and grain corn have accounted for over 80% of total area crop production in Lambton. The fourth and fifth leading crops are sugar beets and hay. Among other crops oats, barley and mixed grains are also produced. Top animal production includes dairy, beef, hog, and poultry...
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)