The Progressive Economics Forum

The following is a guest post by Nick Fillmore. National business journalists and columnists have bought into Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s demeaning view that folks in the Atlantic region are backward and have a defeatist attitude. Framed in contemptuous language, they’re promoting untested economic ideas that, if adopted, would seriously damage the economy – and [...]

The real unemployment rate for Canadians over 25 was 8.8% in April. Not great, for sure, but slightly better than it was in 2009. For youth 15-24, it was up from last April – to 20.9% – so more than 1 in 5 youth are looking for work and can’t find it. In Ontario, it’s closer to [...]

This morning, Statistics Canada reported an apparently decent month of data for April, with a modest increase in employment, all full-time and all in paid positions rather than self-employment. Despite this seemingly good news, the total number of Canadians participating in the labour force edged down. As a result, the participation rate declined to 66.5 [...]

Brian Lee Crowley’s latest column shows he’s a glass-half-full kinda guy. We shouldn’t be worried about unemployment because a) it’s old-fashioned, b) Boomers had it worse (and now they’re getting old) c) we’re doing better than the U.S., and d) it’s really only young people and immigrants that are unemployed. This is a relief. So I [...]

On Tuesday, Statistics Canada reported that job vacancies have fallen to the lowest level recorded since it began collecting these figures two years ago. On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada projected growth of just 1.5% for this year. On Thursday, Statistics Canada reported that the number of Canadians receiving Employment Insurance (EI) benefits edged down in [...]

Armine and I have some comments in today’s Toronto Star article on Temporary Foreign Workers (page B1). Armine has been commenting extensively on this issue and my head talked for a few seconds on last night’s The National. Here is my online Globe and Mail op-ed: Reining In The Temporary Foreign Worker Program Reports of RBC [...]

The headline numbers are bad enough: “employment declined by 55,000 in March, all in full time. The unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points to 7.2%.” The underlying numbers are ugly. The employment decline would have been worse but for a large jump in self-reported self-employment. The number of employees with positions paid by an employer [...]

The Nova Scotia provincial government is set to introduce its promised balanced budget this year. The Nova Scotia Alternative Budget, released today, proposes some concrete choices rooted in Nova Scotia communities. Rather than pay down debt, the NS-APB prioritizes balancing the social debt threatening Nova Scotia. Can a budget really be considered balanced when unemployment [...]

What not to say in an interview if you’re on EI, and other nightmares The latest detail to emerge about the recent changes to EI is from the Digest of Benefit Entitlement Principles.  The Digest is a guide to enforcing Employment Insurance, with definitions of key terms, and elaborates on expectations of EI claimants and [...]

In a guest post at the Broadbent Institute, I flesh out some of the impacts of EI changes with three (fairly typical) hypothetical stories of unemployed Canadians. There are certainly more extreme consequences felt by some already.  At least these folks have access to the Board of Referees. Many fear that access to natural justice [...]

The glaring contrast between employment numbers, and the unemployment rate, was highlighted by today’s labour force numbers from Statistics Canada (capably dissected elsewhere on this blog by Angella MacEwan). Paid employment (ie. employees) declined by 46,000.  Total employment (including self-employment) fell by 22,000.  Yet the unemployment rate fell to 7% — its lowest level since [...]

After five months of  job gains, the job market turned dismal in January. Officially, the unemployment rate fell from 7.1% to 7.0%, the lowest it’s been since December 2008. This is despite a loss of 45,800 jobs (not counting self-employment). The explanation is an out flux of discouraged workers from the labour market, which caused the ‘real’ [...]

Several key changes to Employment Insurance came into effect on Sunday.  The EI program is about to get Grinch-ier, especially for who happen to have needed it more than once. What Changed Some of the changes made are reasonable, some are technical, and some are misguided.  Together, these changes go some way toward redefining what [...]

As we close out 2012, BC finds itself in some precarious economic waters. To recap, a massive housing bubble that built up through the naughties (2000s) finally burst in 2008, feeding a financial crisis, as extremely loose (some would say fraudulent) lending practices pushed housing prices up to spectacular, never-seen-before levels, and created a plague [...]

Every time this government crows about its job creation record, I cringe.  They have moved the finish line and declared victory.  No reason to worry about the unemployed here, folks.  Let’s move on to more public service cuts, and/or tax cuts. Never mind that unemployment has been in and around 7.4% since the spring of [...]

The Harper government likes to remind Canadians that we’ve done better than most developed nations in bouncing back from the global economic crisis. But digging into the data shows why many people might be having trouble cheering this news: wages have not kept pace with inflation, and new hires are making 40 per cent less [...]

Here is a piece I wrote for today’s Globe Economy Lab re the Department of Finance report on the costs of an aging society. The key point is that the mainstream doom and gloom projections of the costs of falling labour force growth  ignore the positive impacts which can be expected as and when we [...]

This September, like every year, a new group of high school graduates headed to college or university to pursue higher education. But today’s generation of students is in for a very different experience from the ones their parents had. On campuses across the country shiny new buildings are popping up, bearing corporate logos or the [...]

At times, the Fraser Institute produces such helpful material. I hope they make their well-heeled funders, such as the multi billionaire Koch brothers, proud. However, I’m sure the Kochs are more concerned that missteps by their progeny Mitt and Ryan are derailing their chance to buy the US presidency. So back to the Fraser Institute [...]

Miles Corak has a great post up about Paul Krugman’s “favourite gauge” of unemployment, the employment rate.  Looking at the ratio of employed to population for working age men, he shows that the employment recovery in Canada appears to have stalled, moving very little since January 2011. The graph below shows youth unemployment (right axis) [...]

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 on changing sex roles, but there are no facts cited to substantiate the argument that North America is seeing the rise of a matriarchy as [...]

Over the past year, the Canadian labour force has grown by 185,000 people, but we have only added 176,600 jobs.  The population grew by 1.2%, but employment only grew by 1%.  The unemployment rate has not budged, at 7.3%, a far cry from the pre-recession rate of 6%. For youth, the picture is worse, with [...]

Further to my earlier post on the “own goal” scored by the Fraser Institute report on North American labour markets, the Table below shows the rankings of the Canadian provinces – out of 60 states and provinces – for (1) labour market performance, 2007-11 and (2) the unionization rate. (I have reversed the Fraser ranking [...]

A release by the Fraser Institute – Measuring Labour Markets in Canada and the United States, 2012 Edition – registers as a spectacular own goal. The Fraser Institute believes – and argues in this study – that strong unions, high minimum wages and high levels of public sector employment undermine labour market performance measured in [...]

Yesterday, Mike Moffatt took to The Globe and Mail’s “Economy Lab” in response to my suggestion that the Bank of Canada should moderate the exchange rate. (Perhaps his motive for encouraging me to seek the Saskatchewan NDP leadership was to get me as far as possible from the levers of monetary policy.) My rebuttal of [...]

Last May federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said there was no such thing as a bad job. The Law Commission of Ontario may disagree. This week it put out a report about the rise in vulnerable workers and precarious jobs. Now that he’s heard from executives who think Canadians are paid too much, Mr. Flaherty [...]

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 union right to work legislation. Coincidentally, or not, the subsequent 2012 federal Budget introduced new rules which will require most EI claimants to accept jobs [...]

Further to Angella’s post, after two months of treading water, Canada lost 30,000 jobs in July. The increase in unemployment was limited to 22,000 only because 8,000 people abandoned the labour force and are no longer counted as unemployed. Regional Breakdown Most of the job losses were in Quebec and BC, which could weaken those [...]

Statistics Canada’s monthly job numbers are out, and it doesn’t look great.  After big jumps in March and April, there was little change in May and June.  In July, total employment fell by 30,000, mostly due to a fall in the numbers of women part-time workers over 55.  The unemployment rate rose to 7.3%. Employment [...]

The following is a guest post by the Alberta Federation of Labour’s Tony Clark: A labour shortage occurs when the demand for labour exceeds the supply of labour, right? Well, apparently not in Alberta. The Alberta Federation of Labour took a long hard look at the Government of Alberta’s projections showing an astronomical labour shortage of [...]