Alex Usher, one of Canada’s most well-known post-secondary education pundits, has just written a blog post offering some sober second thought on Minister Kenney’s recent enthusiasm for Germany’s apprenticeship system. Mr. Usher’s blog post can be accessed here.
Continue readingTag: employment
The 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 readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The mouse in the room: Small business fetish and the minimum wage debate
The scrappy mom-and-pop shop may be a nice image, but how well does it reflect the reality of employment? Small business may be neither as ubiquitous nor economically heroic as many people think. If this is the case, then perhaps the needs of small business should not figure as prominently
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Do High Tuition Fees Make for Good Public Policy?
This afternoon I gave a presentation to Professor Ted Jackson’s graduate seminar course on higher education, taught in Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. The link to my slide deck, titled “The Political Economy of Post-Secondary Education in Canada,” can be found here. Points I raised in the
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The political aspects of the minimum wage
Discussion of the minimum wage can easily slide into a technocratic back-and-forth that ignores the vital political aspect at play. We can see this in much of the response to the report just released by the Ontario government’s Minimum Wage Advisory Panel (MWAP). Andrew Coyne, for example, once again argues
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Tim Hudak: Scott Walker wannabe
Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s pledge to create one million new jobs sounds like a direct rip-off of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s promise to create 250,000 new jobs in a four year term. Only the state, er province and numbers are different. And how is the Koch brother-funded, union-busting
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Are Younger and Older Workers Fighting for Jobs?
There was a spate of media stories recently on a US report finding that increased employment of seniors has no negative impacts at all on young people also seeking work. In fact, the study by leading US economist Alicia Munnell, looking mainly at the experience of US states, did say
Continue readingIlluminated By Street Lamps: No Federal Childcare Program: An Exercise In Strengthening Hegemony
Canada, a nation among the wealthiest in the world, cannot meet its daycare needs. The problem has grown to crisis proportions in the country’s largest cities. In Toronto there are only enough daycare spaces for about one in five of the city’s children.[1] In downtown
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: Labour Force Numbers Worse Than They Look
Today’s Labour Force numbers provide more evidence that Canada’s labour market is still mired in a 3-year funk. Following one year of decent recovery from mid-2009 (the trough of the recession) to mid-2010, driven mostly by extraordinary monetary and fiscal stimulus, further progress has been stalled ever since. Most headlines focus
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Funding Cuts to Alberta’s PSE Sector: There Are Alternatives
It has recently been reported that the University of Alberta wants to “reopen two-year collective agreements” with faculty and staff “to help the university balance its budget…” This appears to be in direct response to Alberta’s provincial government announcing in its March budget that there would be a “7% cut
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: OECD Findings on Employment Protection and Jobs Performance
Further to my earlier post on the OECD’s new data on employment performance across its 34 member countries (and Canada’s relatively poor ranking in that regard), another part of the OECD Employment Outlook 2013 that is also worth reading in detail is Chapter 2. It provides a thorough revision and
Continue readingIlluminated By Street Lamps: In Brampton, Few Recorded Development Votes After Developers Contribute To Political War Chests
By Joe Fantauzzi@jjfantauzzi Key Findings: – The development industry is clearly engaged in the political process at Brampton City Hall. – 233 development companies and development-affiliated individuals were publicly disclosed to have contributed money to Brampton candidates in the 2010 municipal election. – Of those 233 developer donors, 48 were
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada Sinking Fast on Global List of Job Creators
The federal government never tires of boasting that Canada’s labour market has performed better than most other countries through the financial crisis and subsequent recession, and that the number of Canadians working today is greater than it was before the recession hit. That means we have fully recovered from the
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Remove “Canadian experience” employment barrier: Ontario Human Rights Commission
The Ontario Human Rights Commission argues that employers’ rigid requirement for “Canadian experience” for new immigrants is, in some cases, “discrimination under Ontario’s Human Rights Code.” The post Remove “Canadian experience” employment barrier: Ontario Human Rights Commission appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Sask Party Employment Math: From the Great Wall to the Berlin Wall
Last week, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released my policy brief on Saskatchewan job-creation. Using Statistics Canada figures, it demonstrated that “workforce growth has been almost identical during the premierships of Brad Wall and Lorne Calvert.” Unsurprisingly, the main explanatory variable for Saskatchewan employment appears to be commodity prices
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 Canadian Progressive: After layoffs, racialized immigrant workers face precarious employment, poverty wages
by: CAW & Ryerson University | Press Release: TORONTO, June 25, 2013 – Older immigrant workers who have been laid off are falling through the cracks of Canada’s employment system, with many of them ending up in temporary jobs with few benefits, finds a new study released today at Ryerson University’s
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Great Wall Ties Chairman Calvert’s Five-Year Plan
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has released my policy brief (PDF) on Saskatchewan employment growth. It is covered on the front pages of today’s Regina Leader-Post and Saskatoon StarPhoenix business sections. The press release follows: Premier Wall’s Employment Record Lags Calvert and Blakeney Regina – A new policy brief
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Canada Originally Intended All Education To Be Free
Out of Canada’s 33 Fathers of Confederation, only one went to university.1 It’s not that Nova Scotia’s Charles Tupper was the only intelligent one among them, other founders were businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, it’s that none of those jobs, and many others, did not require any post-secondary education. The eduction
Continue reading