The Economics of EI “Reform”

Changes to the EI rules announced by the government today are not rooted in any lengthy policy rationale. But Minister Finley and and the media release spoke to the need to “strengthen work incentives.” This conjures up images of  unemployed workers sitting around and spurning job offers amidst growing labour and skills shortages. As I have previously commented, this framing […]

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Key EI Data No Longer Available

As Heather Scoffield of Canadian Press reports here, Statistics Canada are no longer publishing key EI data because HRSDC have stopped providing it. Data on the dollar value of EI regular benefits are not published in the monthly Statscan release, but were available each month on CANSIM…  until March of this year. As reported on Sam Boshra’s Economic Justice blog, […]

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Krugman: End This Depression Now!

I am an enthusiastic reader of Krugman’s columns and, especially, his economic blog. And I certainly side strongly with him in the intellectual and political struggle against “the Austerians” and “Very Serious People” who are unnecessarily prolonging the Great Recession in America and in Europe. That said, Krugman’s latest book “End This Recession Now” (Norton, New York, 2012) is not […]

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HRSDC Funded Research Contradicts Key Argument For New EI Policy

According to today’s Globe, the government says that the major target of pending changes to EI is frequent claimants, who are disproportionately to be found in  the high unemployment regions. This focus seems to reflect the common belief that supposedly “overgenerous” EI benefits stop some people from moving from high to low unemployment regions. Interesting to note, then, that research […]

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More on “Labour Shortages”

Here are the most recent Statscan job vacancy data by province. There were six unemployed workers for every reported job vacancy in Canada in the three months ending in January, rising to about ten unemployed workers for every open job slot in Atlantic Canada. Note that there is no information on what wages employers were prepared to offer to fill […]

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Why Can’t We Afford What We Used to Have?

In this age of  austerity, we are constantly told by governments that we have to tighten our belts. Tuition fees have to go up; public pensions, Unemployment Insurance and social assistance benefits have to be cut; universal public health care is no longer affordable, and so on ad nauseam. But, as my friend Peter Puxley recently reminded me,  it is […]

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Tightening the Screws on the Unemployed

The significant changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) program which are to be quickly implemented through Budget 2012 with very little consultation have not received enough critical attention. First, a word on what is not in the Budget. It is disappointing, to say the least, that the government is failing to respond to the fact that less than 40% of […]

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From Financial Crisis to Stagnation

I am enjoying Tom Palley’s new book – and would post an enthusiastic review except for the fact that I have been unable to find the time to finish it. Certainly a very clear-headed take on the fundamental economic – and political – transformations that will have to take place if we are to escape global stagnation, or even worse. […]

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The Federal Budget and Women

(The following is from my colleague Angella MacEwen.) The only mention of either men or women in the 400-odd page 2012 Budget Implementation Bill is with regards to the appropriate use of donated sperm and ova. In analysis and discussions of the proposed omnibus bill, differential impacts for women, Aboriginals, racialized persons, newcomers, and *the poor* are frequently left out. […]

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Social Statistics: Ignorance Is Bliss

Pretty soon asking even the most basic social policy questions will require huge amounts of investment in primary research. Regularly published statistical reports and summaries are disappearing by the minute. The elimination of the National Council of Welfare in the Budget means that we will no longer be getting Welfare Incomes, a more or less annual publication which allowed one […]

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Katimavik

I am sure readers of this blog are not unsympathetic to the case for a government supported program which, at a time of very high youth unemployment, annually enables some 1500 young people to volunteer to work in not for profit sponsored community development projects across the country. Participants- aged 17 to 21 – are usually engaged in two projects […]

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Job Gains in March: An Aberration?

Coming after several months of flat or falling job growth, the large jump in employment in March – up 82,300 – has prompted concerns that it could be a statistical aberration, due to sampling error rather than a real change. This could indeed be the case. However, the Standard Error for the national estimate of employment is 28,600 – much lower […]

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The Federal Budget Impact on Jobs

The Budget estimate that a new round of cuts will eliminate up to 19,200 jobs  has been widely cited as fact, but it cannot be taken at face value as argued in an analysis released by the Public Service Alliance of Canada. An extract follows: The government claims the $5.2 billion in spending cuts will mean the loss of 19,200 […]

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The Assault on Statistics Canada Continues

Soon  we will live in a world where we lack an empirical basis for policy and political debate, leaving everyone even more free to invent their own facts. The Globe has a story today on the impact of the Budget. “Statistics Canada, the national statistics agency, informed its staff late last week that it has been ordered to chop $33.9-million […]

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OAS, the Budget and the Baby Boomers

The Budget justifies raising the age of eligibility for OAS and GIS on the grounds that  the long-term fiscal sustainability of the program is being undermined by rising life expectancy. No estimates of savings are provided. They will be very modest. Given that average life expectancy at age 65 is 20 years, raising the eligibility age by two years could […]

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CLC Analysis of the 2012 Budget

Introduction Budgets are all about choices. With unemployment and underemployment still at very high levels and a shrinking middle-class, the federal government could and should have laid the basis for a sustained and broadly shared economic recovery. The federal government should be taking a larger and stronger role in making the economy work for average Canadians, and developing policies that […]

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Taxing High Incomes in Ontario

It is notable that the scale of  Ontario’s ostensibly dire fiscal position did not prompt any major response on the tax side, beyond postponing planned reductions to the corporate tax rate. The government could have raised taxes on high income earners as at least a token of solidarity with everybody from social assistance recipients  to public sector workers who is […]

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The Current Account Deficit

The National Bank have published a very useful and interesting report on the current account deficit, which is now running at about 3% of GDP. They argue that the deficit – largely driven by a huge fall in our manufacturing and wider goods trade balance – has now become structural, and should be cause for much greater concern than is […]

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Canadian Deindustrialization

I thought I had been reading Jim’s posts carefully enough, but I was still kind of stunned when I did a quick stat check to respond  to a comment on my earlier post on globalization and unions. In 2000, manufacturing output (in constant 2002 dollar terms) amounted to $188.9 Billion. In 2010, manufacturing output amounted to $158.3 Billion – 16% […]

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Severance Pay and Public Servants

I am an economist, not a lawyer or expert on the collective agreements in the federal public service, but I can still detect a hatchet job. The CBC have given a lot of play to a Greg Weston story that allegedly generous severance payments to public servants amounting to as much as $2 Billion will be triggered by job cuts […]

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Job Recovery Remains Stalled

Today’s job numbers underscore the need for a federal Budget to create jobs rather than destroy jobs. The overall picture since September of last year has been one of job losses, a decline in the quality of jobs, and falling real wages. The recovery in the job market has stalled and gone into reverse. The national unemployment rate fell from […]

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Pooled Registered Pension Plans

PRPPs – or what I prefer to call Mr. Flaherty’s Inferior Pension Plan or FLIP- are a poor alternative to the option of expanding the Canada Pension Plan. Unlike the CPP, PRPPs will not provide a defined pension benefit  in retirement; there is no required employer contribution; there is no inflation indexing; costs will be much higher than the CPP, […]

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“Globalization” and Unions

Last weekend I participated in a labour law conference at the University of Western Ontario, speaking on a panel which was asked to speak on the impact of trade and investment on labour rights. I weighed in somewhere between my co panelists Kevin Banks and Marley Weiss, arguing that there are very strong downward pressures on the power of unions […]

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Fiscal Austerity and Growth

This may come as a bit of a shock to Andrew Coyne and Jim Flaherty, but even the IMF are warning in their most recent fiscal policy update that  austerity in the advanced economies is going too far, and will dampen growth. Indeed, they even suggest that too much austerity may spook the dreaded bond markets. “Further declines in cyclically […]

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