As Armine has pointed out recently, women play a key role in economic recoveries: (She says it so well, I have to quote her directly:) Every recession is a “he-cession”: men lose more jobs than women in a downturn because the first thing to slow is the production in goods-producing
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The Progressive Economics Forum: Where the jobs at?
Mark it in your calendars folks, today, March 25, 2014 is the day that the Canadian labour shortage** myth officially died. (It may, of course, be resurrected as a zombie). Responding to a Parliamentary Budget Office report that refutes the existence of a labour shortage or skills mismatch in Canada,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Millennials, School, and Work
Given that the 2014 Federal Budget talked a lot about youth unemployment, but didn’t actually do very much, I thought it would be worth going over a few trends for the 20-29 age group. Young workers are usually hit harder by recessions, and this most recent recession was no different.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: How to calculate un(der)employment
For my day job, I wrote a thing about underemployment in Canada. I thought that it might be useful to post my method here so that other interested parties could calculate it for themselves. The headline unemployment rate counts all those who are unemployed, available to start work, and actively
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Chipping Away at Access to E.I.
There were two announcements this week around E.I. – both framed as “being more responsive to local labour market conditions”. What that really means is that in the three territories and Prince Edward Island, access to E.I. will become more difficult in urban areas. Employment Insurance is divided into 58
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Young Workers Needed So Much More from Budget 2014
Recessions are always harder on young workers, but we are nearly five years out from the end of the last recession and there is still no recovery in sight for young workers. Between October 2008 and January 2014, there was an increase of 100,000 unemployed young workers (15-29), so that
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: 2013 Left Us Wanting More … Jobs
The December jobs report was a spectacular finish (not in a good way) to a rather discouraging year for the Canadian labour market. When the dust had settled, it turned out that employment growth averaged 8,500 per month in 2013, compared with 25,900 in 2012. This anaemic job growth was not enough to keep up with the growth in
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Fewer Jobs Without People In 2013
The most recent Jobs Vacancy statistics are out, and the trend for 2013 so far has been a reduction in the number of job vacancies reported by businesses compared to 2012. The number of job vacancies reported by businesses fell by 41,000 between September 2012 and September 2013, so that even
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Flaherty’s Funny Math with the EI Surplus
The Parliamentary Budget Office has come out with a report, suggesting that the Conservatives will likely balance the budget ahead of schedule. But, and it’s a big but, if there were no EI surplus, there would be no balanced budget in 2016. And the annual surplus in the EI Operating
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Raise Wages, Train Workers
I have been hard on our new Employment and Social Development Minister, Jason Kenney, for buying into a widespread myth about labour shortages and skill mismatches in Canada. So, to give credit where credit is due, it appears Minister Kenney has been listening to the growing chorus of voices disputing the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: No Widespread Labour Shortage, widespread information gaps.
A TD Economics Special Report released on October 22nd debunked the popular economic myth spread by Minister Kenney that there are too many jobs without people. The report looks at changes in employment, unemployment, job vacancy rates, and wages. Job vacancy rates are higher for trades occupations in Western Canada,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: More on alternate measures of unemployment
I’ve mentioned differences between Statistics Canada’s R8 measure and the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics’ U6 measure before, but I think it’s worth covering again. R8 is Canada’s broadest measure of unemployment, and includes discouraged workers, workers waiting for a job to begin, and a portion of involuntary part-time. The
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Unemployment is higher than you think.
Every month, Statistics Canada comes out with the unemployment rate, and every month it gets a lot of attention. But the unemployment rate provides quite limited information about the actual health of the labour market. The addition of two other pieces of information nearly doubles the unemployment rate: the proportion
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: About those jobs without people, Minister Kenney
Upon being appointed Minister of the newly renamed “Employment and Social Development” (formerly HRSDC), Mr. Kenney tweeted his view on the Canadian labour market: “I will work hard to end the paradox of too many people without jobs in an economy that has too many jobs without people. #shuffle13“ Coincidentally,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Data, data, everywhere: but
So, the National Household Survey’s Portrait of Canada’s labour force is out, and I can’t help but think of Donald Rumsfeld’s known unknowns. We know that we don’t know anything about those who didn’t respond to the survey, or how they might be different from those that did. We also
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: April EI Numbers Bleak
So Erin talked about falling EI benefits last month, which got me thinking about the longer term trend here. Comparing seasonally unadjusted data for the last five Aprils, we see a steady decline in the proportion of unemployed workers that are receiving EI. Since April 2009, unemployment in Canada has
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Business journalists go on the attack; demonize Atlantic seasonal workers
The following is a guest post by Nick Fillmore. National business journalists and columnists have bought into Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s demeaning view that folks in the Atlantic region are backward and have a defeatist attitude. Framed in contemptuous language, they’re promoting untested economic ideas that, if adopted, would seriously
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Youth Still Stuck in the Recession (Dude, where’s my job?)
The real unemployment rate for Canadians over 25 was 8.8% in April. Not great, for sure, but slightly better than it was in 2009. For youth 15-24, it was up from last April – to 20.9% – so more than 1 in 5 youth are looking for work and can’t find
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Fact-Busting HRSDC’s “Just the Facts” on EI Changes
Attempts by the Harper Government to set the record straight over recent changes to EI simply gloss over many valid concerns that have been expressed by critics. I share a couple of EI Change Fact-Busters in solidarity with upcoming rallys on EI that will be taking place across Canada this weekend.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Crowley’s Red Hot Labour Market
Brian Lee Crowley’s latest column shows he’s a glass-half-full kinda guy. We shouldn’t be worried about unemployment because a) it’s old-fashioned, b) Boomers had it worse (and now they’re getting old) c) we’re doing better than the U.S., and d) it’s really only young people and immigrants that are unemployed. This
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