The Progressive Economics Forum

Further to recent commentary regarding the Harper government’s dramatic expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TWF) program, consider this shocking factoid: Even before the expansion of the program envisioned in the current omnibus “budget” bill, temporary foreign workers (who do not have the same rights as other Canadian workers, and whose presence here depends entirely [...]

A shorter version of this article appeared today in the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab Have you noticed how common it has become to talk about replacing workers with even cheaper workers? If you’re looking over your shoulder, you’re not paranoid; you’re paying attention. There’s probably a cheaper you out there.  And in Canada, the [...]

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 for the shareholders of world, but not for the rest of us. I couldn’t help but notice that, on the very same day Caterpillar shuttered [...]

It is no secret that times of  high unemployment and precarious work are especially tough for new and recent entrants to the job market, notably young workers and recent immigrants. The latter were especially hard hit in the recession and slow recovery of the 1990s, when new immigrants had great difficulty finding decent jobs and [...]

This article first appeared in the Globe and Mail’s online feature Economy Lab on Friday. My thanks to all the commentators on this page for the great discussion of the topic. This week, the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship rightly noted that immigrants are Canada’s ticket to economic growth in the coming years. The untold [...]

NPR has just published a very nice piece of investigative journalism about the role of the private prisons industry in influencing immigration law in Arizona. The new law, passed last spring, extends the power (and responsibilities) of police officers to scrutinize immigrants, essentially allowing policemen to stop anybody they deem suspicious and ask them for [...]

So says a new paper by UBC economist Phil Oreopoulos, Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Six Thousand Resumes. As a skilled immigrant with a non-Anglo sounding name I find this quite disturbing. As should native-born Canadians who like to think that their country is tolerant and welcoming [...]

PEF member Salimah Valiani has written a report, released today by No One is Illegal, on the topic of temporary migrant workers in Canada, and a quiet but important shift in our immigration policies. The full report can be downloaded here and the abstract follows: This report elaborates the shift in immigration policy which began [...]

Economists tend to be remarkably circumspect about racial discrimination in employment, and Statistics Canada is similarly loath to attribute differences in employment and earnings to racial status in other than the most nuanced way. Yet the evidence increasingly shows that racial discrimination is a matter of empirical fact in Canada, and not just a matter [...]

Human Resources and Social Development Canada have posted a research report http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/publications_resources/research/categories/inclusion/2007/sp_680_05_07_e/sp_680_05_07e.pdf It is no secret or surprise that new immigrants (86% of whom are workers of colour) face more significant labour market barriers than other working-age Canadians, and that they are at greater risk of experiencing poverty. But more empirical detail is always useful. [...]

Statistics Canada today released a study on immigrants in the job market, based on the recent inclusion of questions identifying immigration status in the Labour Force Survey. It’s no surprise to learn that unemployment levels are significantly higher among recent immigrants. In 2006, the unemployment rate among very recent immigrants (in Canada 5 years or [...]