The Progressive Economics Forum

While the Canadian economy has begun to recover from the “Great Recession” in terms of the level of GDP and overall job growth, unemployment and under-employment still remain well above pre-recession levels. The national unemployment rate in June 2010 was 7.9%, well up from 6.0% two years earlier. The number of unemployed workers was, at [...]

For the first time in eight months, the number of Employment Insurance (EI) recipients increased in May. We already knew from the Labour Force Survey that unemployment had increased by just over 8,000 in May. It is good news that EI expanded by the same amount because it implies that those who became unemployed that [...]

Today’s Employment Insurance (EI) figures for April indicate essentially no change in the number of Canadians receiving benefits or in the number filing claims.
To put these flat EI numbers in context, April was the strongest month yet of labour-market recovery. Indeed, it saw the largest percentage increase in employment since August 2002.
In one sense, today’s [...]

Statistics Canada reports that, after February’s pause, Employment Insurance (EI) resumed its contraction in March. Specifically, 24,200 fewer Canadians received regular EI benefits. The key question is whether these unemployed workers found jobs or simply ran out of benefits.
The Labour Force Survey indicated that employment rose by 17,900 in March. Therefore, it seems unlikely that [...]

Erin has blogged before on variable EI coverage of the unemployed at the city level  http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/09/28/employment-insurance-benefits-by-city/ and I have been aware for some time that  coverage is relatively low in the giant Toronto CMA.
Nonetheless, I was taken aback to find out that, in the most recent month for which we have EI and Labour Force [...]

A recent article in The New York Times illustrates this point with the story of an unemployed administrative assistant in her 50s, who has not been able to find a job for over two years after being laid off. As the journalist explains, her difficulties are likely not the result of age discrimination, the weak [...]

This morning, Statistics Canada released Employment Insurance (EI) figures for February. These figures show slightly more recipients nationally, but somewhat fewer recipients among provinces. Statistics Canada confirms that this apparent discrepancy reflects the fact that each province is seasonally adjusted separately from the national total.
When seasonal adjustment is tipping the balance between an increase and [...]

The number of Canadians receiving regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits dropped by 47,700 in January, the largest monthly decline in years. As usual, the key unanswered question is whether these workers are no longer on EI because they found jobs or simply ran out of benefits.
The Labour Force Survey indicates that employment rose by 43,000 [...]

The number of Canadians receiving Employment Insurance (EI) benefits plummeted in December. The drop of 40,100 was the largest monthly decrease in years.
One would anticipate some decline in the number of EI recipients as the job market begins to recover. But the magnitude of December’s decline suggests that, in addition to those former recipients who found [...]

The content in the EI report by myself and Sylvain Schetagne which was released by the CCPA yesterday won’t be new to readers of this blog - an updating of trends in unemployment and EI use to show that tens of thousands of workers who lost their jobs early in the Great Recession are and [...]

The number of Canadians receiving regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits declined by 7,300 in November. As always, we do not know whether these workers found jobs or simply ran out of benefits. The Labour Force Survey indicated higher employment and slightly lower unemployment that month, which supports a positive interpretation.
Following these declines in [...]

There is more evidence in today’s release of EI data that the decline in the number of EI beneficiaries is being driven by exhaustion of benefits rather than by a fall in unemployment.
Between September and October, the number of unemployed (seasonally adjusted) rose by 37,700 but the number of regular EI beneficaries (also seasonally adjusted) [...]

Today’s Employment Insurance (EI) release indicates that 4,000 fewer Canadians received benefits in October. The key unanswered question is whether these workers found jobs or simply ran out of benefits.
To make matters more ambiguous, the two main employment measures point in opposite directions. The Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours for October, also released this [...]

The following is an extract from the CLC publication “Recession Watch” available at
http://www.canadianlabour.ca/sites/default/files/Recession-Watch-03-Fall-2009-EN.html
Before the recession, more than one in four (27.9%) of claimants exhausted their benefits (29.9% of women and 26.5% of men) and more than one in three (34.3%) older workers exhausted their benefits. Currently, claimants are eligible for between 19 weeks and 50 [...]

(The following post is a slightly edited version of the CLC Submission to the House of Commons Human Resources Committee.)
Bill C-56 extending EI special benefits to the self-employed looks likely to pass very soon with all party support. It is an important step forward in term sof extending needed benefits to a growing category of [...]

This blog flagged, and Worthwhile Canadian Initiative pursued, a striking discrepancy in July’s employment data. The Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH) indicated that employers paid 74,000 more employees.
Conversely, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) had indicated that employers paid 79,000 fewer employees in July. This difference of 153,000 exceeds 1% of Canada’s workforce.
Today’s release [...]

Today’s Employment Insurance (EI) figures indicate that, in August, 23,000 more Canadians filed EI claims but 19,000 fewer received EI benefits.
The most optimistic possibility is that all of the workers who stopped receiving benefits got jobs. Indeed, the Labour Force Survey indicates that total employment rose by 27,000 in August.
However, that is not the end [...]

UPDATE (October 20): The transcript of the hearing described below is now available.
. . .
Late this afternoon, I had the pleasure of serving on a Parliamentary panel composed entirely of members of the United Steelworkers union. 
My co-panellists before the Human Resources committee were Ken Georgetti, CLC President, and Rosalie Washington, a laid-off worker who would [...]

UPDATE (September 29): Quoted by The Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, and Canadian Press
. . .
A recent inquiry for a NOW Magazine article has inspired me to use the July Employment Insurance (EI) figures, released this morning, to examine how this program serves Canadian cities. However, I begin with a national overview of [...]

Some pundits have blasted the NDP for voting with the Conservatives in exchange for “a bone,” “crumbs” or “a peanut” on Employment Insurance (EI).  Others have convincingly countered that forcing an election right now would not advance EI reform or other progressive causes. Nevertheless, the decision to temporarily support the government deserves further analysis in [...]

Janice MacKinnon’s op-ed on Employment Insurance (EI) in Monday’s National Post read almost as if it had been written before the economic crisis. There was no mention of mass layoffs or rising unemployment, let alone proposals to enhance EI in response to these trends. Instead, she sees the biggest problem with EI as being the [...]

The latest changes to EI to be introduced by the Conservatives do almost nothing for the shock troops of the labour market, those who were first felled when the recession hit last year.
Bill C-50 will pass – whether or not it is fast-tracked today or “well-considered” in committee depends on how the procedural tactics imbedded [...]

With their backs once again to the wall, the Conservatives today announced that they will, at long last, propose additional measures to help the unemployed, something almost everyone inside and outside Parliament has been asking them to do for the better part of a year.
They will extend employment insurance benefits by another 5 to 20 [...]

UPDATE (August 26): Quoted by Canadian Press, Canwest, The Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
It would be welcome news if the number of Canadians receiving Employment Insurance (EI) benefits increased because of a proactive policy decision to expand this program to combat the recession. In fact, [...]

I note from a CP wire story  that Ottawa U economist David Gray is weighing in behind Harper’s argument that lowering eligibility for EI would be a “disaster”, and I suspect strongly he will not be the last to do so.      http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/1135526.html The received wisdom among mainstream neo liberal economists is that a “generous” [...]

The worst news in today’s Employment Insurance (EI) figures is that new benefit claims hit a record high. Rising numbers of unemployed workers and hence EI beneficiaries are an unsurprising result of a deteriorating labour market. However, the increase the number of new EI claims suggests that the pace of deterioration is worsening rather than easing. [...]

The Spring, 2009 issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy contains a useful and interesting piece which convincingly rebuts the often cited and assumed link between Unemployment Insurance “generosity” and higher unemployment due to alleged disincentives to work. You’ll have to pay for the full article, I’m afraid, but here is the abstract.
Unemployment compensation [...]

Believe it or not, in 2011, the “new” EI Fund will begin life $10.5 Billion in the hole, setting the stage for a big job-destroying hike in premiums, even though there is a $57 Billion surplus in the “old” EI Account.
In the 2009 Budget (p 106) , the federal government announced that it [...]

Today’s Employment Insurance (EI) figures confirm that fewer than half of unemployed Canadians received EI benefits in April. Although 18,600 more Canadians received benefits in April than in March, this was the smallest increase in six months.
The relatively modest increase in EI beneficiaries corresponds to a relatively small increase in official unemployment during April, the [...]

Political debate and media reporting on today’s economic “Report to Canadians” have emphasized one of the first tables in the document, in which the government claims to have “committed” 80% of budgeted stimulus spending (page 14 of 230).
Equally interesting, but perhaps less noticed, are the two “Fiscal Outlook” tables near the end of the document [...]