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Shrugging off Canada’s competitiveness shortfall

Friday, May 18th, 2012

May. 18, 2012
There is very little that can be done about Canada’s gaping competitiveness shortfall. Almost three-quarters of the gap is due to the soaring loonie, which is out of our control… Could Canadian workers be the problem? Again, the answer is no. Canada has among the highest rate of postsecondary education graduates in the world, performs well above average (and the United States) in international testing, and has a superior (and more rapidly improving) labour quality than the United States… during periods of high commodity prices, resource-intensive countries like Canada shed competitiveness. But this is paired with no obvious diminishment to well-being,..

Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living
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The poor in Toronto: They’re working but not getting any richer

Sunday, February 12th, 2012

Feb. 12, 2012
Even during times of economic prosperity, from 2000 to 2005, the number of working people unable to make ends meet grew by 42 per cent in the Toronto area. The exacerbation was especially pronounced in the city’s transit-starved east end. But rates grew fastest in the suburbs… A deep recession and sluggish recovery haven’t helped… Immigrants make up a little more than half of all the working-age population in the Toronto area – but almost three-quarters of the region’s working poor.

Tags: economy, immigration, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Where Did All the Workers Go? 60 Years of Economic Change in 1 Graph

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Jan 26 2012
The big story about American jobs in the post-war period is this: The manufacturing/agriculture economy shrunk from 33% to 12%, and the services economy grew from 24% to 50%… as manufacturing and agriculture got more efficient, they required fewer American workers, while the services industry (which had slower efficiency gains since it has more person-to-person work) required more employees to keep up with the rising demand for consulting, nurses, teachers, computer technicians… Manufacturing jobs have declined as a share of the economy. But manufacturing hasn’t declined as an industry. It’s grown. By a lot.

Tags: economy, globalization
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Minimum wage hike key to cutting poverty

Sunday, December 18th, 2011

Dec 17 2011
“The government says the best route out of poverty is a job… But people working full time earning minimum wage are still having trouble paying the bills… And enforcement is key to ensuring workers get what they are owed. “Any initiative the government takes to alleviate poverty for low wage workers has to be backed up by enforcement”… The report urged Ontario’s labour ministry to proactively target employers in high-violation industries such as hospitality, cleaning, retail and construction, which attract newcomers, young workers, visible minorities and other vulnerable workers.

Tags: economy, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Fixing the Hole in E. I.

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Dec, 6, 2011
Many unemployed Canadians are ineligible for Employment Insurance, so that welfare becomes their only alternative… applicants must exhaust their financial assets, and the paternalistic requirements of welfare are stigmatizing. As a consequence, it is difficult to bounce back from welfare into the economic mainstream… Something is needed between Employment Insurance, with its relatively higher benefits but limited reach, and welfare, to which anyone in need can apply but only for inadequate benefits.

Tags: economy, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Employment Insurance system unjust and inefficient, report finds

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Nov. 15, 2011
Fewer than half of jobless Canadians get EI. That’s down from about 80 per cent in the mid-1990s, when Ottawa made the program less generous to save money. “The number of people outside Canada’s social safety net is growing and growing,” said Mr. Mendelsohn, an academic and former top federal and Ontario government official… In some parts of the country, work is scheduled around the seasons to squeeze the more out of EI. It isn’t efficient, says Arthur Sweetman… People are sitting at home when they could be productive.” Employers have also learned to exploit the system.

Tags: ideology, rights, standard of living
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Is our EI system broken?

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Nov 15 2011
… the EI system is complex, opaque and not easily understood by contributors. It says the current program has failed to keep up with societal and economic change and it’s widely recognized that there are deep problems at the core of the system. Too many people, it says, are being left out of the social safety net, too many are carrying an unfair burden and too many are not achieving their potential.

Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Ontario’s youth unemployment: We must step up the economic growth agenda

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

Sep. 13, 2011
With an unemployment rate (15.7 per cent) nearly double that of the average worker in the province, the number also masks the permanent effects that long-term high unemployment rates can bring. The list notably includes: (1) lower lifelong earnings… (2) the misallocation of talent… and (3) the psychological toll that ends up hurting not only the young workers themselves but their families and friends… To reverse that stubbornly high rate of unemployment for our young, we need to step up the growth agenda and leave aside any talk of micro-economic miracles.

Tags: economy, youth
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New Statscan survey aims to pinpoint where the jobs are

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

Jun. 22, 2011
The agency will start an official index in the autumn that will track vacancies by province and industry and, eventually, how that changes over time… Statscan has also just completed a pilot project that gathered detailed data on job openings and, starting in the fall of 2012, plans to release an annual study that explores job vacancies by occupation, labour shortages and hard-to-fill positions.

Tags: economy, participation, standard of living, youth
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The high-tech rebirth of Canada’s textile industry

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

Jun. 18, 2011
The industry… has been clobbered by unfettered foreign competition, a high Canadian dollar and eroding free-trade benefits for much of the past decade. Between 2005 and 2009, for instance, textile shipments plummeted 43.5 per cent, while manufacturing as a whole only sank 18.1 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. The firms that have survived this dramatic contraction are generally smaller and more nimble than in the industry of old.