Canada’s labour market stagnated again in June. Employment edged up by only 7,000 as the working-age population grew by 30,000. In response to this job shortage, 17,000 Canadians dropped out of the labour force. Canada’s economy is not generating nearly enough jobs to keep pace with the number of available
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The Progressive Economics Forum: U.S. Right-to-Work Thinking Now Infecting Canada
It’s clear we’re going to have to gear up our arguments on right-to-work laws, dues check-off, the Rand Formula, etc. In the last year three mainstream parties have introduced proposals for right-to-work style legal changes in Canada (Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party, the Wild Rose Alliance, and now yesterday Tim Hudak’s
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Job seeker to Job vacancy ratio remains high
Statistics Canada has released their latest data on job vacancies today, in the Daily. In March 2012 there were 5.8 job seekers for every job vacancy in Canada, down from 6.5 in March 2011. This is mostly because there were about 57 000 fewer unemployed in March 2012 than there
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: In Memoriam: Perspectives on Labour and Income
Another sad tombstone to the shrinkage of information for informed social and economic policy – Statscan has decided to discontinue “Perspectives on Labour and Income” in both print and online format. For as long as I can remember, Perspectives reliably provided a firm empirical base for policy debate on key
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: A Green Industrial Revolution
Today the CCPA released a new big picture report by myself and student researcher Amanda Card calling for a Green Industrial Revolution. The report builds on work done for the BC-focused Climate Justice Project, bringing to bear a national analysis of green and not-so-green jobs. We take a close look
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Labour Market Stalls
Canada’s job market stalled in May. Employment edged up by 7,700, almost all of it part-time. In fact, the number of employees paid by Canadian employers fell by 15,600. Total “employment” rose only because 23,300 more Canadians reported themselves as self-employed. Over the past year, employment has grown slightly less
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Budget, Employment Insurance and the Unemployed
Following are the notes on which I based presentations to the Senate National Finance Committee on June 6 and the House of Commons Finance Committee on May 29. They summarize key CLC concerns with the Budget Implementation Bill. Lack of Consultation The significant changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) program
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Economics of EI “Reform”
Changes to the EI rules announced by the government today are not rooted in any lengthy policy rationale. But Minister Finley and and the media release spoke to the need to “strengthen work incentives.” This conjures up images of unemployed workers sitting around and spurning job offers amidst growing labour
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Shrinking EI
Statistics Canada reported today that 2,500 fewer Canadians received Employment Insurance (EI) benefits in March. In total, only 549,400 out of 1,356,200 officially unemployed workers got benefits. The context for proposals to clamp down on EI is that only 40% of unemployed Canadians currently receive benefits. The Harper government wants to
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: HRSDC Funded Research Contradicts Key Argument For New EI Policy
According to today’s Globe, the government says that the major target of pending changes to EI is frequent claimants, who are disproportionately to be found in the high unemployment regions. This focus seems to reflect the common belief that supposedly “overgenerous” EI benefits stop some people from moving from high
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: More on “Labour Shortages”
Here are the most recent Statscan job vacancy data by province. There were six unemployed workers for every reported job vacancy in Canada in the three months ending in January, rising to about ten unemployed workers for every open job slot in Atlantic Canada. Note that there is no information
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Saskatchewan Manufacturing Hits the Wall
Premier Brad Wall was Tweeting about today’s Statistics Canada report of an uptick in national manufacturing sales in March. It is an odd report for him to trumpet, given that it found a decline in Saskatchewan’s manufacturing sales that month. Another recent Statistics Canada report, Friday’s Labour Force Survey, indicates
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Memo to Ministers: The Issue is Unemployment Not Labour Shortages
The federal government is basing labour market policy on the belief that, as Jason Kenney pithily puts it in today’s Globe, there are “large and growing labour shortages.” Hence moves to bring in even more temporary foreign workers at lower than average wages, and to push EI claimants into supposedly
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Jobs: Ontario Left Behind
Statistics Canada reported today that April was another good month for the labour market. The Canadian economy added 58,200 jobs, most of which were full-time and all of which were paid positions rather than reported self-employment. Paradoxically, official unemployment increased as more Canadians entered the labour market. This development provides
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: PBO Strikes Again
I wanted to tip my hat to the hard working folks at the PBO for a particularly revealing Economic and Fiscal Outlook that was published today. While the PBO has more than once eaten my lunch on various issue they’ve done a superb job of looking at Canada’s economic and
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Job Gains in March: An Aberration?
Coming after several months of flat or falling job growth, the large jump in employment in March – up 82,300 – has prompted concerns that it could be a statistical aberration, due to sampling error rather than a real change. This could indeed be the case. However, the Standard Error for
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Real Unemployment Rate = 11.3%
Statistics Canada reported significant employment growth today for the first time in six months. As Andrew has already noted, welcome strength in March does not make up for the five preceding months of stagnation. Compared to September 2011, full-time employment has increased by 21,900 while Canada’s labour force and population
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: A Good Month Leaves Us Well Short of a Recovery
Today’s job numbers for March are much stronger than they have been since last September. Job creation was very strong – up 82,300 in the month, with 70,000 of those positions being full-time. The national unemployment rate fell from 7.4% to 7.2%, the level it was at last September. The
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Federal Budget Impact on Jobs
The Budget estimate that a new round of cuts will eliminate up to 19,200 jobs has been widely cited as fact, but it cannot be taken at face value as argued in an analysis released by the Public Service Alliance of Canada. An extract follows: The government claims the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: More on Declining Labour Force Participation
As a supplement to the excellent (and more timely!) posts from Andrew and Erin this morning, let me add a few points on the most striking feature of today’s Labour Force Survey: namely, the accelerating decline in labour force participation. The part rate (seasonally adjusted) fell to 66.5% of the
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