Income Inequality & twitter
Armine Yalnizyan had a great twitter debate with Andrew Coyne on poverty and inequality, that Trish Hennessey storified here: http://bit.ly/QwHGJB I think it bears repeating that GDP growth has far…
wages
The End of Men?
The Globe and Mail on Saturday devoted two pages of its Focus section to a discussion of Hanna Rosin’s book, The End of Men. There are a few interesting anecdotes…
Canada’s Economic Problem is NOT High Wages
Bill Curry reports in today’s Globe that, at last year’s economic policy retreat, business leaders urged Finance Minister Flaherty to reduce the pay of “overpriced” Canadian workers, including through anti…
Incomes Flat in “Recovery Year” of 2010
Today’s Statscan release of income data for 2010 allow for a backward glance at the state of the recovery. What is most striking is that – following two years of…
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…
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Jackson raises an absolutely devastating point to refute anybody trying to use “it’s all about growth!!!” as an excuse for slashing social…
a tiny glimpse into the ways our government serves the corporate and financial world, not the people of Canada
Some Key Areas Where Neoliberal Policy Undermines both the Industrial Economy and Canadian Democracy Under the Harper Regime, the investor class is constantly being protected at the expense of the…
Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – For much of the relatively recent past, one of the areas of relative consensus in economic theory is that productivity increases would find…
Inflation Central
Statistics Canada reported today that consumer prices edged up by 0.1% in February on a seasonally-adjusted basis, bringing the annual inflation rate to 2.6% and the core inflation rate to…
Labour Force Exodus
Statistics Canada reported this morning that 38,000 people gave up looking for work in February. The official unemployment rate fell because these Canadians were no longer counted as being unemployed.…
BC isn’t broke: putting teacher bargaining in perspective
Last Monday, BC teachers held a Day of Action in communities across the province to protest the BC government’s decision to legislate a contract and put an end to their…
Inflation and Drummond
Statistics Canada reported today that consumer prices jumped in January (by 0.4% or 0.5% seasonally-adjusted), offsetting the drop in December. As a result, the annual inflation rate is now 2.5%…
In the Wake of the Crisis: Bully Capitalism
A shorter version of this article appears today at Economy Lab, the Globe and Mail’s on-line business feature. Capitalism has entered an ugly new era, one that may work well…
Recalculating inflation: billions in savings for governments and employers paid for by workers and pensioners
The top story in the Globe and Mail today reports on something I warned about a year ago: Statistics Canada is making changes to the way it calculates the Consumer…
Budget Cuts Could Worsen Rising Unemployment
It was not a happy new year for Canadian job seekers. Statistics Canada reported today that unemployment rose for a fourth consecutive month in January. Overall employment remained flat as…
Five Lumps of Coal for Canada’s Economy
The recent IMF Report on Canada prompts me to remind everyone of some startling figures about the Canadian economy: 1) The private and federal debt combined ratio to GDP is…
Economic Climate and Inequality
The December issue of the quarterly Economic Climate for Bargaining publication I produce is now on-line. This issue has a number of pieces on issues of inequality, including: Rising inequality…
Modest Inflation Outstrips Wages and Canada Social Transfer
Statistics Canada reported today that the annual inflation rate remained 2.9% and the Bank of Canada’s core rate remained 2.1% in November. The monthly increase in consumer prices slowed to…
New study dispels myths about public sector pay
OTTAWA – December 14, 2011: There is no evidence the average pay of public sector workers in Canada is consistently higher than comparable occupations in the private sector, reports a…
Battle of the Wages study dispels myths about public sector wages
A comprehensive study released today by CUPE shows there’s no evidence public sector workers are paid consistently more than those in similar jobs in the private sector. Instead, overall average…