jobs

Report disputes Harper’s record on jobs

Dana Flavelle / Toronto Star

Unemployment is higher, job quality is mixed and there is evidence pay inequality has increased under the Harper government, according to a report to be published Wednesday.

While the economy has created more jobs since the Great Recession of 2008, unemployment is still higher than it was in 2006 when the Harper government came to office, the report for the Broadbent Institute found.

“That hasn’t stopped Stephen Harper and...

The Harper Record on Jobs, 2006-2014

There are many factors other than federal government policy that strongly influence the quantity and quality of Canadian jobs including resource prices, business decisions, the state of the American and the global economy, and the actions of provincial governments to name a few. 

That hasn’t stopped Stephen Harper and his Conservative government from trumpeting their record as good economic managers and pursuing a successful jobs and growth agenda. Harper’s supposedly “steady hand” on the economy is central to Conservative election messaging and his perceived economic acumen a...

Canada loses 4,300 net jobs in December, jobless rate stays put at 6.6%

Andy Blatchford / The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- The Canadian labour market capped off 2014 by losing 4,300 net jobs in December, a slight dip from the previous month that left the unemployment rate locked at 6.6 per cent, Statistics Canada said Friday.

The agency's latest job-market survey found that Canada added 185,700 net new positions in 2014, with the bulk of the increase coming in the second half of the calendar. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, moved...

Beyond bleak jobs numbers, full-time gains paint a brighter picture

David Parkinson / The Globe and Mail

Canada’s employment count ended 2014 with back-to-back monthly declines, but beneath the surface of the stalled job numbers is evidence of an improving quality in the country’s labour market.

The Canadian economy shed 4,300 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis in December, adding to November’s 10,700 decline, as job creation continued its pause following big gains in September and...

Stalled recovery takes shine off Harper's economic record

Editor's note: after releasing its July jobs report on Aug. 8 showing 200 jobs were created overall, Statistics Canada said on Aug. 12 it had made an unspecified error in the labour force survey. The agency released an amended jobs report on Aug. 15. This has been updated to incorporate Statistics Canada's correction.

The Harper government boasts of rapid job creation since the recession. But today's revised job numbers...

Canada's over-hyped jobs recovery

The Conservative Party recently launched the “We're Better off with Harper” campaign with the claim that “with over one million net new jobs created in the recovery, Canada's economy is on the right track – thanks to the strong leadership of Stephen Harper and Canada's Conservatives.” 

There have indeed been more than one million jobs created since mid-2009 when the recovery began. But the job market in Canada is still far weaker than was the case before the recession.

The national unemployment rate in...

Fact check: putting the Conservatives' "million net new jobs" into context

The Conservative Party recently launched the “We're better off with Harper” campaign with the claim that “with over one million net new jobs created in the recovery, Canada's economy is on the right track – thanks to the strong leadership of Stephen Harper and Canada's Conservatives.”

The number in that claim is carefully chosen, and taken in isolation is factually correct. In the five years of recovery from June 2009 to June 2014,...

Profiting from the precarious: new report details recruitment abuse of migrant workers

As scandals about abuse of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program break with increasing regularity, the spotlight still overlooks the exploitation that workers face just to get jobs under that program.

A new report from the Metcalf Foundation reveals that migrant workers regularly pay thousands of dollars in recruiting fees — equal to as much as two to three years’ wages in their home currency — to work in minimum wage jobs in Ontario. 

To pay the fees, workers must borrow from recruiters and informal money lenders.  They sign over the...

Falling participation rate a sign of a soft job market

A close look at today's labour force numbers indicates that fewer Canadians in all age groups are either working or are unemployed and actively seeking work.

While it is influenced by demographic trends such as an aging population, a falling participation rate is generally a sign that people have given up looking for jobs due to a low level of hiring by employers.

The overall participation rate in March was 66.2%, well down from 66.6% in March, 2013.

This very significant decline was mainly experienced among so-called core age workers age 25 to 54. For men in this age...

Economy’s supposed slow recovery is really a ‘secular stagnation’

In 1939, the United States and much of the world were still struggling to exit the Great Depression that had begun a decade earlier. In that context, Alvin Hansen – the prominent economist and disciple of John Maynard Keynes – famously argued before the American Economic Association that the underlying problem was not cyclical, but rather “secular stagnation.”

Mr. Hansen anticipated an extended period of sluggish growth and high unemployment,...

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