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 […]
Read moreAs 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…Â until March of this year. As reported on Sam Boshra’s Economic Justice blog, […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreAccording 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 […]
Read moreHere 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 […]
Read moreGlancing idly at the numbers, I find to my slight surprise that the Canadian stock market (S&P/TSX) is now down about 25% from the May, 2008 peak, whereas the US stock market (S&P 500) is down by only about 10% from its peak in May, 2007. So, since the beginning of the crisis, owners of US corporations have done significantly […]
Read moreThe federal government is basing labour market policy on the belief that, as Jason Kenney pithily puts it in today’s Globe, there are “large and growing labour shortages.” Hence moves to bring in even more temporary foreign workers at lower than average wages, and to push EI claimants into supposedly available jobs. Not that the facts appear to matter, but […]
Read moreIn 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreI 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. […]
Read more(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. […]
Read morePretty 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 […]
Read moreThe C D Howe Institute have put out a study on later retirement by Peter Hicks, a former senior official with HRSDC and the OECD who has written a lot on the policy implications of ageing societies. I find this to be one of his less convincing efforts. The argument – with parenthetical comments – is as follows. 1) Employment […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreComing 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 […]
Read moreToday’s job numbers for March are much stronger than they have been since last September. Job creation was very strong – up 82,300 in the month, with 70,000 of those positions being full-time. The national unemployment rate fell from 7.4% to 7.2%, the level it was at last September. The youth unemployment rate also fell sharply, from 14.7% to 13.9%. […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreSoon 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreIntroduction 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 […]
Read moreIt 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreFormer Assistant Chief Statistician Michael Wolfson shows that governments collectively stand to save very little from hiking the age of eligibility for the OAS/GIS, a measure that is widely expected to be in Thursday’s Budget. The math (based on the SPSDM): In 2011, cutting OAS/GIS from seniors age 65 and 66 would save the federal government $4 Billion. However, the […]
Read moreI 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% […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreToday’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 […]
Read morePRPPs – 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, […]
Read moreLast 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 […]
Read moreDean Baker has weighed in on the weird idea that Iceland might adopt the Canadian dollar. It is their decision to make, but I also don’t see much to recommend it.
Read moreThis 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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