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By Armine Yalnizyan, on May 3, 2013, at 6:05 pm
1. He’s Number Two: Stephen Poloz was widely acknowledged in economic and political circles as the second-best choice for the top job at the Bank of Canada. So the surprise was not that he was chosen. The surprise was, Why Not Tiff Macklem? Will someone please find out and tell the rest of us?
2. Doctrinaire [or not?] on Inflation Targeting: He thinks it’s “sacrosanct.” Having studied with monetary policy guru David Laidler at the University of Western Ontario, and been part of the Bank of Canada team that brought inflation targeting to a neighbourhood near (Read more…)
By Anthony Passaretti, on April 28, 2013, at 9:21 pm ……..
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20…..
Do you know what this is?
It is a count of the amount of days since my last job interview. A count that is used to monitor a continued hope that employment in my field or a career of some sort will be attainable under the current economy. As I have mentioned in previous entries, my current dilemma is the result of a University education. Look how I capitalize University, making it seem like this important, distinguished and enlightening experience. Well, the capitalization will now end, university is how it will remain forever.
I do not expect my university (Read more…)
By Angella MacEwen, on April 22, 2013, at 9:42 am Brian Lee Crowley’s latest column shows he’s a glass-half-full kinda guy. We shouldn’t be worried about unemployment because a) it’s old-fashioned, b) Boomers had it worse (and now they’re getting old) c) we’re doing better than the U.S., and d) it’s really only young people and immigrants that are unemployed.
This is a relief.
So I shouldn’t worry that Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey indicates that real average hourly wages have risen by only twenty cents between 2009 and 2012 (an annualized growth rate of 0.3%). Or, that at the same time, real median hourly wages have (Read more…) fallen, indicating that any wage growth is limited to a few at the top end.
Crowley cites vague evidence from internet job advertisements to point out that the number of jobs going unfilled are rising fast.
That’s good news for Canada’s 1.3 million job seekers. They had been discouraged by Statistics . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Crowley’s Red Hot Labour Market
By Christine, on March 29, 2013, at 1:22 pm Hope you are enjoying a relaxing long weekend Friday, as we are. One of the topics that has come up while we relax and sip our morning tea is the plans for our garden this summer. Besides just talking about it, my husband, also spent time this morning tending to his basil seedlings and babying [...]
By Lorne, on February 24, 2013, at 8:45 am
Continuing with the theme of yesterday’s post, I am taking the liberty of reproducing some letters that appear in today’s Star on free trade. They nicely puncture the myth, propagated and perpetuated by the right, of its unalloyed benefits to Canada:
Brian Mulroney and the harsh reality of Canada-U.S. free trade: Hepburn, Feb. 21
For many years before and after Brian Mulroney’s free trade agreement I worked as a mechanical engineer with consulting firms. During those years I was involved in the design of a number of food processing plants. At least four of the plants were “grassroots”
. . . → Read More: Politics and its Discontents: Free Trade – Part 2
By Lorne, on February 23, 2013, at 3:12 pm Actually, our former Prime Minister is more a legend in his own mind, but then, confronting harsh reality has never been one of Mr. Mulroney’s strong suits. His litigious past serves as ample testament to that fact.
But myth is always much more exciting than truth, and what better myth could Mulroney propagate than the one about the free-trade agreement his government negotiated 25 years ago with the United States? Last week, he made an appearance at the University of Toronto’s Rotman business school, where more than 700 guests gathered to commemorate his government’s ‘great’ achievement. In his usual
. . . → Read More: Politics and its Discontents: The Legend of Brian Mulroney
By Jim Stanford, on February 8, 2013, at 3:41 pm The glaring contrast between employment numbers, and the unemployment rate, was highlighted by today’s labour force numbers from Statistics Canada (capably dissected elsewhere on this blog by Angella MacEwan).
Paid employment (ie. employees) declined by 46,000. Total employment (including self-employment) fell by 22,000. Yet the unemployment rate fell to 7% — its lowest level since late 2008.
Fewer people were working, yet the unemployment rate declined. What gives?
Especially during times of economic weakness, the official unemployment rate is a bad measure of the state of the overall labour market, for familiar reasons: to qualify as (Read more…)
By Angella MacEwen, on February 8, 2013, at 11:03 am After five months of job gains, the job market turned dismal in January. Officially, the unemployment rate fell from 7.1% to 7.0%, the lowest it’s been since December 2008. This is despite a loss of 45,800 jobs (not counting self-employment). The explanation is an out flux of discouraged workers from the labour market, which caused the ‘real’ unemployment rate (R8) to jump from 9.4% to 10.7%.
Gains in self-employment masked the job losses, as there was an increase of nearly 24,000 self-employed persons in January, for an official loss of 22,000, nearly all in full-time positions. Ontario suffered
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Job Market Worsens in January
By Greg Fingas, on February 2, 2013, at 5:47 pm This and that for your Saturday reading.
- Hamida Ghafour writes about the effect of tax avoidance by the world’s wealthy on the lives of the rest of the population – particularly when coupled with austerity pushed based on a lack of revenue: The OECD is a fierce defender of free-market capitalism. But Saint-Amans says politicians are realizing that rules set up in the 1920s need reform because allowing corporations and the very rich to hang on to huge amounts of wealth is bad for the economy. “When you have a political crisis, I am sad to say it, you . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
By Ron Brown, on January 26, 2013, at 11:48 pm I am a reformed and rehabilitated ex-academic. In my previous life, I aspired to be a professor of Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science. I described my experiences in the academic stream in a series entitled The Grad School Gospels. In The Grad School Gospels I have been pessimistic about the value of most Psychology graduate degrees. I argued that the tenure-track job market for Psychology PhDs is devastatingly competitive and that for most Psychology sub-fields non-academic career paths are limited. That is, there often aren’t many jobs to go around that reflect one’s training and interests and that offer
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: How are Psychology PhDs doing on the job market?
By Christine, on January 19, 2013, at 6:56 am Need a smile? A program on Spanish radio organized a small flashmob to perform and sing The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” for one of the unemployment offices in Madrid.
By Angella MacEwen, on January 16, 2013, at 3:11 pm It has been a week and a half since changes to the definition of suitable employment and reasonable job search have come into effect. Already, a single mom in Prince Edward Island, Marlene Giersdorf, has become a symbol of the hardship these changes are likely to have on many Canadians in the coming months.
When she refused to expand her job search radius to Charlottetown, a 45 min drive away, because she didn’t have a car, she was cut off EI benefits. Giersdorf says she was told that if she wasn’t willing to look for work in Charlottetown, then she could
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Pushback on EI Changes
By Ron Brown, on January 12, 2013, at 8:10 pm The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional baseball. Inspired by Hayhurst and the many commonalities I noticed between the minor league track to the Majors, as he described it, and my experience in the grad school track to cognitive science professorship, I began the Grad School Gospels series.
In this, the fifth installment of The Grad School Gospels, I’ll be changing things up a bit. Firstly, this installment will not touch on professional baseball or Dirk
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 5: The University Graduate Entitlement Complex
By Ron Brown, on December 29, 2012, at 4:49 pm The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional baseball. Inspired by Hayhurst and the many commonalities I noticed between the minor league track to the Majors, as he described it, and my experience in the grad school track to cognitive science professorship, I began the Grad School Gospels series.
In this, the fourth, installment of The Grad School Gospels, I speak to how I – a person who had long prided himself on his advanced critical thinking
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 4: On Grad School Goggles and the Cult-Like Nature of Grad School
By Ron Brown, on December 29, 2012, at 12:43 am The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional baseball. Inspired by Hayhurst and the many commonalities I noticed between the minor league track to the Majors, as he described it, and my experience in the grad school track to cognitive science professorship, I began the Grad School Gospels series.
As with Part 2 – Passion, Fear and Indifference – the present installment was inspired by a set of quotes from Hayhurst. After a few disappointing seasons Dirk
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 3: Academe Can’t Be Your Everything
By Greg Fingas, on December 26, 2012, at 2:28 pm This and that for your Wednesday reading.
- Pat Atkinson highlights what should probably be the story of the year for 2012: the continued degradation of Canadian democracy under a government which views Parliament and the public with an alarming degree of contempt: Harper’s Conservatives see Parliament as a nuisance. Committees meet in secret, and opposition MPs aren’t to reveal what is learned. And it is clear that most of Parliament’s power has been centralized into a prime minister’s office that is determined to control governing party MPs and even its cabinet ministers.
Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of politics at
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
By Angella MacEwen, on November 15, 2012, at 1:34 pm Every time this government crows about its job creation record, I cringe. They have moved the finish line and declared victory. No reason to worry about the unemployed here, folks. Let’s move on to more public service cuts, and/or tax cuts. Never mind that unemployment has been in and around 7.4% since the spring of [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: The Harper Government’s New Math
By Zoom!, on November 4, 2012, at 9:29 am
I had the interview on Friday afternoon, and then on Saturday, when I was at Duncan’s vet’s office, I got the call offering me the job. I announced to a waiting room full of strangers “I got the job!” and they all cheered.
It’s not just any job, either – it’s a good job! It’s with a non-profit organization that is aligned with my personal and political values, and I like the people I’ve met who work there. I’m going to be doing community development work with transgender people and women with HIV/AIDS, so the work itself will be
. . . → Read More: knitnut.net: I got a job!
By thescottross.blogspot.com, on October 23, 2012, at 3:22 am Sept 2012: Unemployment is up at 7.4%; it has been increasing since June while American unemployment has only gone down.
July 2012: Worst trade deficit ever in Canadian history at $2.3 billion.
2012: GDP growth rate is declining (PDF pg 22). Canada is no longer the fastest growing economy in the G7; it is now behind America and Japan, as well as other more comparable resource-based economies like Australia and Norway.
2007-2012: Growing debt-to-GDP ratio, now at 85%. Since 1996 Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio had been decreasing from a dangerously high 102% to an eventual low of 66% in
. . . → Read More: The Scott Ross: The Conservative Economic Record
By Angella MacEwen, on October 5, 2012, at 11:32 am So there were 52,000 new jobs in September, but we needed 72,500 to keep up with labour force growth. 33,800 of those jobs were self-employed workers, and none of those jobs were for workers under 25.
In the past year, men over 25 have been adding full time jobs, with 116,000 more full time jobs compared to September 2012. Women over 25 have added about the same number of jobs as men (118,000), but these jobs are evenly split between full-time and part-time.
A smaller proportion of the population is working now than was the case 4 years ago. Overall,
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: We can do better
By Oh, on September 29, 2012, at 1:56 am I was reading through the Ontario Progressive Conservatives White Paper on unions, and I came across a most interesting part. Page 6, emphasis mine,
When the Canadian dollar had a low value relative to the American dollar, many Canadian business were slow to increase productivity. For a time they could afford rigid labour contracts and still compete. That’s no longer possible.
Oh my god! The Progressive Conservative party has just implicitly admitted that Dutch Disease is a thing! They just admitted this is a problem, that is driving away manufacturing jobs from Ontario! Somebody call the Toronto Star!
(Read more…)
By LeDaro, on September 27, 2012, at 1:25 pm
Could the world’s oldest profession be the newest solution to Spain’s jobs crisis? “Immediate opportunity! Professional prostitution classes. Very profitable occupation for both sexes.” This ad, targeting the nearly 25% of unemployed people in Spain, appeared last May in the streets of Valencia.
Advisor of this employment training program must be Rush Limbaugh. He is quite suitable for this job.
Read the full story at The Huffington Post website.
By Travis, on August 29, 2012, at 10:38 am
We can perhaps amend an old Ethiopian saying to read “absolutes are for infants and kings”. It is catechism worth remembering when arguing with liberal economists. For theirs is not a just sport. In fact, one should never mix sport with justice. As Berlin said long ago (1958):
Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.
Much of the mainstream of the profession has dedicated its intellectual muscular skeletal movements to verifying the proposition that, through one theoretical contortion or the
. . . → Read More: Relentlessly Progressive Political Economy: Bullshit in absolutes: or how ‘liberal’* economists argue with themselves
By Obert Madondo, on August 10, 2012, at 12:33 pm This is the kind of news Stephen Harper and the Conservatives would wish you didn’t hear. That’s because it debunks the self-made myth that they’re competent economic managers. They want us to believe that Canada survived the recent global recession better than most countries because of them. And, they’re rapidly anti-evidence. Anti-statistics.
Well, out is the truth backed by statistics: The Canadian economy just lost 30,400 jobs, according to Statistics Canada’s July jobs report.
As a result, the jobless rate jumped from 7.2 percent in June to 7.3 percent in July. Now Canada has recorded consecutive job losses in
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive World: Canada lost 30 400 jobs in July & apologists blame the global economy
By Farron Cousins, on August 6, 2012, at 12:40 pm redtape.jpg
With July 2012 officially behind us, the U.S. jobs report for the month has economists and politicians concerned about the employment situation in America. And even though the economy added 163,000 jobs (economists had predicted only 100,000 jobs to be added for July,) the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate both crept slightly upwards. And with national elections coming up in three months, poor jobs numbers could be bad for our health.
If history is any indicator, Conservative politicians and think tanks will use last month’s poor jobs report in an attempt to provide massive giveaways to
. . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: House Republicans Sacrifice Human Health For Alleged Job Creation
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