Article Excerpts:
"There is no crisis in the availability of workers in Canada, at least in 2013. The national unemployment rate is at 7 per cent, and there are more workers than jobs in some regions of Canada. Pressures on wages are muted in many occupations and regions, especially in Ontario. The Canadian economy shed 430,000 jobs during the 2008-09 recession, and the labour market has yet to fully re-absorb all available workers displaced in the wake of the financial crisis. Youth employment, for example, is down by about 200,000 compared with pre-recession levels. The unemployment rate has fallen to just 4.3 per cent in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and wage gains are once again strongly outpacing inflation. During the decade before the recession, employment rose by 2 per cent a year in Canada. In the years to come, the pace will slow drastically. By the end of this decade, growth in employment will slow to well under 1 per cent a year, and to just 0.6 per cent annually by 2025. Employers will soon have to reduce their pace of hiring to less than one-third of what they were accustomed to before the recession." |
Macro-Economics: study of economy as a whole. (e.g. study overall level of consumption, investment, government spending, prices, and employment in an economy)
Unemployment Rate: percentage of members who are temporarily laid off, and those who are without work and who are actively seeking employment Structural Unemployment: loss of jobs due to long-term changes in consumer demand, the decline in natural resources, the development of new technologies, and shifts in trade between nations (e.g. new technology of car building means blacksmiths are replaced by auto mechanics). Cyclical Unemployment: result of inadequate demand during the declining economic activity of the business cycle (e.g. high rates of unemployment in Canada during 1930s and early 1980s) |