I’ve written a little bit about the importance of tracking underemployment trends, and this is particularly important when those trends diverge from the headline unemployment rate. This graph (12 month moving average of unadjusted monthly data) separates unemployed workers and underemployed workers. In recent years the number of unemployed workers
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The Progressive Economics Forum: Austerity Bites, Employment Rate Falls Again
Today’s labour force numbers are ugly, there’s no other word for it. Employment down 29,000 jobs. Paid employment (ie. not counting self-employment) down 46,000 jobs. The only reason the unemployment rate held steady (at 6.9%) is because labour force participation fell again: by almost 2 tenths of a point, to
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: May (we struggle to work less during the) Day
The struggle for fewer working hours during the day, and by extension the week and the year, was long a cornerstone of organized workers. Both the struggle and the actual number of hours worked has stalled of late. Annual hours worked in Canada, the US and UK have all followed a similar pattern,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Joshua Holland writes that for all the social and cultural factors contribution to U.S. sickness and death, inequality ranks at the top of the list: Here in the United States, our high level of income inequality corresponds with 883, 914 unnecessary deaths
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: More Evidence that Temporary Foreign Worker Program Takes Jobs Away from Canadians
Yet another report, this time by SFU Public Policy Professor Dominique M. Gross, finds evidence that Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program is bad for domestic workers. The report looks at BC and Alberta specifically and concludes that the expansion of the TFW program between 2007 and 2010 resulted in an
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 readingParchment in the Fire: The Disastrous Labor And Social Reforms In Spain
The Disastrous Labor And Social Reforms In Spain. By Vincente Navarro Spain, under pressure from the Troika (International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank) has gone through three major labor market reforms, presented to the public as necessary in order to reduce the scandalous high level of unemployment:
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: Myths of central banking
The Bank of Canada has been in the news lately – or, more precisely, the news has been full of other well-placed people telling our central bankers what to do. In an interview on CTV this past weekend, Jim Flaherty made comments (later retracted) that Canada’s central bank will be
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Eurozone: A Sluggish economy offers no extra jobs – The European Sting – Critical News & Insights on European Politics, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Business & Technology – europeansting.com
http://europeansting.com/2014/01/09/eurozone-a-sluggish-economy-offers-no-extra-jobs/ Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Austerity, crisis, Europe, unemployment
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: 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 readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jordan Brennan and Jim Stanford put to rest any attempt to minimize the growth of inequality in Canada: (I)ncome inequality has reached a historic extreme. Inequality was high during the 1920s and 1930s (the “gilded age”), but fell sharply during the Second World
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Only 36.5 per cent of unemployed Canadians now qualify for EI: NDP
by: Obert Madondo Statistics Canada reported last week that Employment Insurance (EI) recipients dropped by 2.1% in July to 503 900 after the Harper government toughened the rules earlier this year. The federal NDP calls the drop a “new historic low”, accuses the Harper Conservatives of cutting EI to deny Canadians “help
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: 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
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