Blog
The Canadian Economics Association Conference: Employment Impacts of COVID-19
The COVID-19 crisis has affected everyone in Canada. But when it comes to labour market outcomes, a few groups have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s impacts: low-income earners, members of visible minority groups and women. At the 2021 Canadian Economics Association (CEA) conference, I chaired the (first) LMIC session exploring the labour market impacts…Read More
Rural and Urban Employment Impacted Differently by COVID-19
Across Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented job losses. Employment fell by 0.4% (-73,500) in April and remains 2.2% (–422,750) below the pre-pandemic employment level in February 2020. The loss and partial recovery in employment has followed different patterns based on where workers live. As of April 2021, large cities remain the furthest…Read More
Double Penalty: Being a Woman and a Visible Minority
For the first time, Canada’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) began asking respondents in July 2020 to identify if they fall into one of several designated visible minority groups, including Arab, Black, Chinese, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian and South Asian. Prior to this update, the only source for reliable labour market information (LMI) on visible…Read More
I Was Clueless About Skilled Trades, but You Don’t Have to Be
At the end of high school, I had to decide what I was going to do next. The only options I thought I had were to attend university or find a job straight after graduation. Entering an apprenticeship program to become a skilled tradesperson was nowhere on my radar. I had no idea about the…Read More
Producing and interpreting labour market information: Best practices
Canadians need high-quality and reliable labour market information (LMI) to support their workplace, career and educational decisions. However, LMI is produced by various groups that use diverse definitions, approaches and methodologies, making it difficult to evaluate the quality of LMI and how best to use and apply it. To address this challenge and ensure that…Read More
“Stay in School!”: Is More Education Actually Better?
“Stay in school!” is the rallying cry of many Canadian parents who see education as the key to improving their children’s standard of living. In fact, more education is generally associated with higher salaries and better working conditions. It is also linked to a wide range of other benefits, including increasing a country’s economic prosperity.…Read More
Volatile Employment in 2020 for Jobs With Lower Educational Requirements
The year 2020 has been a volatile one for labour markets—massive job losses and reduced working hours have affected millions of Canadians, particularly in the spring when lockdown measures were first introduced. As we have noted in previous blogs, these impacts have not been evenly spread across sectors of the labour force, having hit low…Read More
LMI: Alone, we can go fast—but together, we can go far
On November 25, 2020, the Government of Canada (GC) released a report titled Canada – A learning nation: A skilled, agile workforce ready to shape the future. The report outlines five priorities, starting with providing access to relevant, reliable, timely labour market information and tools so all Canadians can make informed learning and training decisions.…Read More
Part-Time and Full-Time Employment Among Immigrants: A Tale of Two Recoveries
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, LMIC has been analyzing the emerging data on job loss and recovery. Previous LMIC blogs have shown, for example, that immigrants have experienced greater employment losses than Canadian-born workers, and that the recovery has been slowest for female immigrants. Building on that work, we now examine employment recovery among full-time and…Read More
Employment Recovery Lags for Low Earners
In August 2020, employment increased by another 246,000 jobs (+1.4%) to bring total employment in the month to nearly 97% of its February level. As noted by Statistics Canada’s data release, low-earning workers suffered larger initial job losses and are now facing a weaker recovery. Much of this is because low-earning workers are concentrated in…Read More