As yesterday’s Labour Force Survey confirmed, the recession continues for the vast majority of Canadians, who rely on employment for most of their income. But the technical measure of a recession is consecutive quarterly declines in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Some have suggested that, even by this measure, the recession continues. Of course, we will not have a definitive […]
Read moreI purchase a monthly unadjusted Labour Force Survey data series from StatsCan that provides monthly labour force trends by age, sex, province, and type of job (full-time, part-time, by industry, and by status – self-employed or employed). This is a helpful addition to the published monthly stats in The Daily, which use seasonally adjusted numbers from the Labour Force Survey. […]
Read moreOne dimension of today’s dismal jobs report that hasn’t received enough attention yet is the continuing slide in labour force participation. It declined again to 67.0 percent (following a bigger decline last month that was the crucial ingredient in September’s counter-intuitive reduction in the unemployment rate). The participation rate hasn’t been lower since July 2002 — over nine years ago. […]
Read moreDuring tonight’s Hockey Night in Canada I got to see the new ads for Canada’s Economic Action Plan (OK, I think they are new; I don’t watch TV except for hockey). Now that it is October, I find it interesting to hear the government trumpeting the plan they tabled back in … when was that again? … oh, yes, January […]
Read moreI had been girding my loins yesterday, with the release of StatsCan’s July GDP numbers, for another orgy of triumphalist headlines: “The Recovery Is Nigh! All is Good! Stop Worrying! Nothing to See Here, Folks!  Just Go About Your Business!” After all, Chrysler’s two humongous Canadian assembly plants went back to work in July (after a 6-week shutdown as Chrysler went […]
Read moreFlat Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures for July provide a sobering reminder that the technical end of a recession may not imply a rapid recovery. Output appears to have stopped shrinking, but this morning’s release suggests stabilization rather than growth. Rounding to the nearest billion, all-industry GDP has been $1,184 billion for three months. It had peaked at $1,241 billion […]
Read moreThe latest changes to EI to be introduced by the Conservatives do almost nothing for the shock troops of the labour market, those who were first felled when the recession hit last year. Bill C-50 will pass – whether or not it is fast-tracked today or “well-considered†in committee depends on how the procedural tactics imbedded in the bill are […]
Read more           This week marks the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers: the darkest moment of the global financial crisis, when those in charge genuinely feared for the survival of their system.           This somber anniversary has sparked a modest flurry of retrospection in the media. But the dominant tone (Michael Moore’s new movie aside, of course) has not […]
Read moreWith their backs once again to the wall, the Conservatives today announced that they will, at long last, propose additional measures to help the unemployed, something almost everyone inside and outside Parliament has been asking them to do for the better part of a year. They will extend employment insurance benefits by another 5 to 20 weeks for those who […]
Read moreLayoffs Continue Today’s Labour Force Survey indicates that full-time employment declined by 4,000 in August. There were 7,000 fewer jobs in goods-producing industries. Retailers Hire A surprising 21,000 new jobs in retail and wholesale trade propelled economy-wide employment up by 27,000. This increase consisted entirely of part-time jobs. While any employment gain is welcome news, the quality of these new […]
Read moreThe September BC Budget is a new look at a budget most have come to see as a fake. February’s budget was not passed through the legislature due to the May election, and up to E-Day the government maintained the fiction that it had a small-ish deficit of just under half a billion dollars. Since that time, the government has […]
Read moreThis morning’s Gross Domestic Product figures put the lie to Prime Minister Harper’s claim that “we will come out of this faster than anyone.” While many other advanced economies grew or stabilized during the second quarter of 2009, the Canadian economy shrank by 0.9%. During this period, three G7 countries – Japan, Germany and France – experienced economic growth. The […]
Read moreHere is a guest post from BC union (Steelworker) researcher Kim Pollock. By Kim Pollock There is growing evidence that a new stock-market bubble is growing daily, right before our very eyes. But while stock-market prices and market capitalization grow, there are still few signs of real economic recovery. In Canada for instance, real gross domestic product decreased 0.5 percent in […]
Read moreThank you, Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper. I just finished the first leg of a long-contemplated kitchen renovation that got pushed over the top by February’s federal budget tax credit for home renovations. This year only! Act now before it is too late! The credit is worth a maximum of $1,350 per family if you spent a full $10,000 or […]
Read moreToday’s job numbers are a clear sign that, far from entering a recovery, the Canadian economy is still in free-fall. This was the first month of the third quarter, the quarter in which the Bank of Canada expects positive GDP growth to resume . But, over the past two months, the number of employees has fallen by 124,000 or one […]
Read moreWith my oped last week on the NDP platform making me less than popular over at NDP HQ, today the Sun published my take on the Liberals’ platform, thereby guaranteeing that the list of Christmas parties I get invited to dwindles to next to nothing. BC’s Economic Challenges and the Liberal Platform By Marc Lee The BC Liberal platform features […]
Read moreCCPA Executive Director Bruce Campbell coordinated the following letter, published at rabble.ca, from a number of progressive economists (mostly academic and private sector, not from the trade union sector) about the growing risk of deflation in general and the federal government’s attack on auto workers in particular. Government pressure to cut wages will increase the risk of deflation It is […]
Read moreBC’s recession started in 2008. That is the upshot of today’s release of Statistics Canada’s Provincial Economic Accounts, which provides the first estimates of BC’s GDP for 2008. Unlike national data, which are provided quarterly and on a timely basis, we have to wait about four months to tally the various provincial beans. These numbers will inevitably be revised in […]
Read moreBelow is an oped of mine that was done at the request of the Vancouver Sun and that ran in today’s paper. Unfortunately, for reasons that are not entirely clear, the last two paragraphs were cut off, leaving the oped hanging. I put them back in below, and have requested that the online version be changed. UPDATE: The online version […]
Read moreJust in time for a heated election campaign, the latest unemployment numbers paint a grim picture for BC. Just a year ago, BC was coasting along with an unemployment rate of just over 4%. By the end of 2008 that had crept up to 5%. And now a truly brutal first quarter that saw the rate leap to 7.4% in […]
Read moreIt makes my blood boil when I see headlines like this one from the Globe online: “Economic optimism boosts markets”. They are, of course, not talking about the markets that matter for most families’ day-to-day lives – those markets are still tanking. No, the Globe is talking about the stock market, as if an uptick of optimism among our financial […]
Read moreA missive from CCPA Executive Director Bruce Campbell: The G-20 the leaders’ meeting in London on April 2 will be a important test of whether the major nations are up to the challenge of confronting this recession and preventing it from becoming a depression. Will their collective response of monetary, fiscal and financial reform measures be bold enough and sufficiently […]
Read moreThe IMF’s reputation took a real beating during the Asian financial crisis more than a decade ago. During a financial panic, it decided to impose contractionary monetary and fiscal policies on countries that came to it needing funds in the short-term. I won’t get into the details but Stiglitz’s Globalization and its Discontents and Krugman’s Return of Depression Economics are […]
Read moreHere is the upbeat take on retail sales from Statistics Canada’s Daily: Retail sales rose 1.9% in January after decreasing 5.2% in December. Sales rose in five of the eight retail sectors, led by a 3.8% increase in the automotive sector. In volume terms, retail sales were up 1.8%. It goes on to report that sales are up in nine […]
Read moreThe IMF released the results of its Article IV consultation with Canada, giving us an outsider’s take on how well we are handling the global economic crisis. But it is hard to know what to take away if left to the mainstream press, when the business page headline in the Globe and Mail is “IMF dashes hope of short recession” […]
Read moreIt is one of those publications that few media outlets will report on, and even fewer British Columbians will read, but BC Stats just released the latest version of its Local Area Economic Dependencies, updated based on 2006 census data. This publication basically asks where the income in various BC communities comes from. In many communities the resource sector is […]
Read moreNot deficit, with a small d, but Depression with a big one. By now, everyone has come around to accepting that we are in a recession. Even though we have not had the rule-of-thumb two quarters of negative growth, rising unemployment, collapsing housing starts, drops in retail sales and so forth all tell us we are in a recession. Technically […]
Read moreHaving dropped its overnight interest rate to 0.5%, the Bank of England also announced a package of quantitative easing, of some £75 to 150 billion worth: It will create £75bn and use it to buy government bonds (gilts) and corporate debt over the next three months to boost the flow of money in the economy. The Bank has been given […]
Read moreIn the last few months, governments here and abroad have made every effort to “turn on the taps” of credit — in Canada, we have more than half a dozen such programs (and counting) under the banner of the EFF (Extraordinary Financing Framework), including (but not limited to): the IMPP (InsuranceMortgage Purchase Program); the CSCF (Canadian Secured Credit Facility); the […]
Read moreFaced with a nasty recession at its doorstep, the BC budget is uninspiring and underwhelming in its ambition. Overall there is little that actively plans for a recession, preferring instead a steady-as-she-goes budget, perhaps aimed at cultivating the image of responsible economic managers in a time of crisis. There are no tax cuts or drastic spending cuts, thankfully, but nor […]
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