Alex Usher Needs to Consider Taxation
My debate with Alex Usher on tuition fees continues, over at the Academic Matters web site. In my latest post, I make the case that Mr. Usher needs to consider…
labour market
Tim Hudak, job-killer
It’s a bit of a headscratcher. First, Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak builds his whole campaign around a promise to create one million new jobs in Ontario over eight years,…
If underemployed workers counted …
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…
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…
Political Eh-conomy Radio: Temporary Foreign Workers
The Temporary Foreign Workers Program has been increasingly in the spotlight the last few weeks. Many allegations have surfaced about the appalling living and working conditions faced by migrant workers.…
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…
Labour Market Data Sitting on a Shelf
The Globe and Mail reports that the results of the Workplace Survey have sat on a shelf for two years due to cuts at Statistics Canada and a lack of…
Why France’s Economic Problems Matter
I’ve had the good fortune to live in France for the past 10 months on a year-long sabbatical and therefore been able to witness firsthand the travails of the Socialist…
Women’s Work
My mother says that when she graduated from high school in 1972, she had two occupational choices: nurse or teacher. Nurse and teacher are still the most popular choices for…
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program and labour solidarity
Yesterday, I took a look at the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and how it helps enforce labour discipline on all workers, and low-wage workers in particular. Today, I want…
The Temporary Foreign Workers Program and labour market discipline
While it is a truism that migrant labour built Canada, this same migrant labour has long been used to discipline domestic workers. Both facts are imprinted into the history of…
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…
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”:…
Alex Usher on Jason Kenney’s Enthusiasm for German Apprenticeships
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.…
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).…
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…
StatCan Reports Fewest Vacant Jobs on Record
Statistics Canada reported today that there were only 199,700 vacant jobs in December 2013, the fewest recorded since it first reported these figures for March 2011. Statistics Canada began tracking…
IWD 2014: The “girl effect” reduces inequality, but Canada can’t coast on that much longer
Every year when International Women’s Day rolls by, I can’t help but reflect on power, how it’s shared, and how women use the power they have. This year, I am…
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…
Canada’s Job Market: Slower, Lower, Weaker
The following commentary on yesterday’s job numbers is quoted in today’s National Post (page FP4): The Olympic motto may be “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” but Canada’s employment growth is slower, lower…