The Progressive Economics Forum

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Posted by Andrew Jackson under labour market.
February 16th, 2012
Comments: 9

With unemployment high and rising, job creation should surely be on the agenda.

The Government of Canada has a program called Job Creation Partnerships, funded under Employment Insurance.

It supports projects which “provide insured participants with opportunities to gain work experience that will lead to ongoing employment. Activities of the project help develop the community and the local economy.” (2010 EI Monitoring and Assessment Report. Annex 3.3)

Hey, there’s a great idea. Put unemployed workers to work and help them gain skills through community development projects.

But – as of November – the program had a grand total of 280 participants across Canada. (CANSIM Table 276-0001.)

That represents 0.06% of all regular EI beneficiaries, and 0.018% of the unemployed in November.

It is well known that Canada’s active labour market policy measures are, to say the least, modest.

But this is ridiculous.

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Comments

Comment from Travis Fast
Time: February 16, 2012, 1:25 pm

I will it say it again: training in Canada is a joke.

Comment from T Manderly
Time: February 16, 2012, 7:10 pm

This why we need to be letting everyone know that if Harper and Mcginty cut public spending the jobs situation would be WAY worse….

Comment from Travis Fast
Time: February 16, 2012, 8:21 pm

To my mind it is mostly up to Harper. Unless he reminds the bond markets that the Feds intend to back stop provincial debt then provinces like Ontario are going to get hit by higher financing costs which lowers the amount of sustainable debt. Mind you Ontario is no where near the 120% of GDP limit currently in vogue at the IMF. I should do a post on that but I am swamped.

Comment from Paul Tulloch
Time: February 21, 2012, 3:04 pm

Here is an interesting report that ranks Canada very near the the top of developed countries with the highest proportion of low waged workers amongst the entire waged workforce. Right behind the US and the UK. What is happening to that employment model.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/low-wage-lessons

Comment from Travis Fast
Time: February 22, 2012, 7:20 am

That is the model.

Comment from Travis Fast
Time: February 22, 2012, 2:02 pm

The shocker in that article is Germany.

Comment from Paul Tulloch
Time: February 22, 2012, 10:16 pm

yes, potentially a transitioning of the east and west, but you would think the unification would have dispelled that. Maybe the immigration policy is not integrating all workers, but a buffer for the high waged.

Comment from Paul Tulloch
Time: February 22, 2012, 10:23 pm

I meant unification was such a long time ago, and I know there was a transition period but is it still that prevalent?

Comment from Travis Fast
Time: February 23, 2012, 9:10 am

Yes unification and the scrapping of eastern German industry is largely the story about Germany’s high unemployment after unification. The low wage work I think is some of that but also the dirty little German secret about temporary foreign workers leading up to and after unification. Anyway so much for the superiority of Rhinish capitalism.

I will have to look at the methodology but I think the Dutch estimates are low. Near 50% are employed in part-time jobs crica 2005. I do not trust the southern European numbers either. All those economies have large grey labour markets.

Static cross country comparisons are very difficult to make. I wish the authors would have done a trend analysis for each of the countries and then done the comparisons on the trends.