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…
labour market
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.…
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…
Harper Job Record in 2013
Further to Erin’s post, the Labour Force Survey numbers released by Statistics Canada on December 6 give the lie to the Harper government’s frequently heard claim that our economy is…
A Part-Time, Do-It-Yourself Job Market
Statistics Canada reported that employment grew by 22,000 in November. But 20,000 of those new jobs were part-time. The proportion of all Canadian jobs that are part-time rose to an…
How Harper can avoid turning a Budget Implementation Bill into a Duffy budget bill
On November 25th, I made the following submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance regarding Bill C-4, Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, on behalf of…
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…
Job Market Stuck in a Rut
The words “little change” appear eight times in today’s Statistics Canada press release on the Labour Force Survey. The figures for October are indeed remarkably similar to September. This lack…
Social Assistance in Canada
This week I am attending a conference entitled “Welfare Reform in Canada: Provincial Social Assistance in Comparative Perspective,” organized by Professor Daniel Béland. The focus of the conference is “social…
When a Lower Unemployment Rate is Bad News
Today, Statistics Canada reported an unemployment rate of 6.9% for September. One might have expected Canada’s unemployment rate falling below 7% for the first time since 2008 to be cause…
This is Not the Saskatchewan NDP’s Official Position
I have the following opinion piece in the latest (September 2013) edition of The Commonwealth, accompanied by this disclaimer: “The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the…
The benefits of sick leave — and of absenteeism
Most of us know the old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That’s why we’re told by teachers to keep our kids home from school…
Black Day for EI in July
Today, Statistics Canada reported a large monthly drop of 10,900 for July in the number of Canadians receiving regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits. Its press release noted, “This decline brings…
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…
Part-Time Growth in a “Hamster Wheel” Job Market
Today, Statistics Canada reported that employment increased in August, although two-thirds of the additional jobs were part-time positions. The part-time rate rose to 19%, its highest level in more than…
Unifor: Canada’s Newest Union
I am still catching my breath from one of the wildest weeks in my life: all the events that culminated in the founding convention last weekend in Toronto of Unifor…
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…
Austerity Bites? Public-Sector Implosion Hits Canada’s Job Market
Statistics Canada reported a loss of 39,000 jobs in July, even as Canada’s working-age population grew by 39,000. As a result, unemployment rose and many Canadians withdrew from the labour…
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…
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…