About those people without jobs …
Statistics Canada released their latest job vacancy data today, giving us the three month average ending in January 2014. There were 6.7 unemployed workers for every job vacancy, higher than…
Angella MacEwen
He-cession to She-precarious recovery?
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”:…
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).…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…