This article is one in many, saying the same thing that the quality of jobs keeps decreasing all over Canada, & in fact, all over North America & Europe. When the recession started back in 2008, nobody was expecting that the recession will continue on for 7 years & still continuing on. That recession structurally changed the mindset of employers & their hiring practices.
In the meanwhile, the general public kept & still keep upgrading their skills, especially their educational skills, to the point that now the Canadian public has a surplus of designated accountants, MBAs, Masters, engineers, & other professionals. Technology is also doing its fair bit in removing those jobs which require the repetitive kind of work or even easier work, e.g. bookkeeping (quite a few cloud-based services are available for self-employed people to do their own bookkeeping, & hence, bookkeeping profession is going into oblivion).
So, as Benjamin Tal says, a section of the public, especially the "employer" section now has choices in hiring for whatever position they want to fill. Since, they are receiving hundreds of resumes for every position, they are making the criteria harder or just relying on networking, which creates its own set of hurdles for job seekers.
One of these criteria are now employers requiring years of related work experience & university-level education even for an entry-level job. Since, the employers have choices, they are also "bullying" their employees by giving far more work to one employee & making employees feel that they better do what they are given, at the measly salary they are getting, because they are replaceable & there will always be someone who is willing to do their work for the same amount of money.
On top of that, as per one of the reports shown on CBC's National in April 2015, that Canada is creating a lot of positions, but they are mostly part-time & contracts (as this article also says). Why? Because, employers save on paying for benefits, & they still get their work done.
So, the whole lifestyle of the public is on a downhill slope. Incomes are falling. Benefits are decreasing. Hours of work are increasing. Productivity is rising. Competition for a fewer & fewer office jobs are decreasing. Thanks to free trade deals, like NAFTA & TPP, manufacturing will keep flowing out of labour-expensive, developed countries to cheaper-labour developing countries. Not all people can become MBAs & become managers in a decreasing number of companies or not all people can become entrepreneurs, either.
Result: Immigrants who are skilled & mobile will move out of the country (Canada, US, UK, Europe) to wherever they find better opportunities in terms of salary, career advancement, raising a family etc ... essentially, brain drain. People who are not mobile or not skilled have no choice but to stay put & endure whatever conditions they are given. But that has a limit. Eventually, those people will rebel & then, there will be chaos & destruction, as we can see, what's been happening in Greece.
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The Canadian economy continues to create jobs at a fairly steady pace, but questions are mounting over the quality of those new positions.
Several reports have concluded that the country’s job market is not as strong as it looks & now a study from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce paints an even worse picture. According to the bank’s analysis, job quality has fallen to its lowest level in more than 2 decades. A CIBC index that measures 25 years worth of data on part-time versus full-time work, paid versus self-employment & compensation trends, has fallen to its lowest level on record.
The Bank of Canada’s new measure of labour market indicators also showed “slack” in the jobs market & it has noted “ongoing labour market challenges” such as a low participation rate among core-aged Canadians. Another report from the Toronto-Dominion Bank last month pointed to more weakness than the unemployment rate suggests.
The trend has implications for the broader economy. A lack of hours along with a prevalence of lower-wage jobs & self-employment underscore why many households are having difficulty shoring up savings & why consumer spending may taper off this year.
As household finances get squeezed, the risk is that debt – already near record levels – could grow further, leaving people more vulnerable to any type of economic shock. “After every recession, [job quality] goes down, but it doesn’t fully catch up. So there is almost a permanent loss every time that there is a shock,” said Benjamin Tal, CIBC’s deputy chief economist. This is why the decline in employment quality “is more structural than cyclical.”
One notable shift is that a smaller portion of the labour market now has higher bargaining power, or high-paying jobs, while a larger segment has lower bargaining power, he said. “This is the main reason why the income gap is rising, which I believe is the number one economic, social issue facing the country in this decade.”
The CIBC index tracks 3 components, all of which are showing a deterioration. The first indicated that the number of part-time positions has risen “much faster” than that of full-time jobs since the 1980s. (Over the past year, though, some of this has reversed as full-time jobs rose faster). Self-employment is another measure, as economists tend to view it as less stable &, on average, lower paying than salaried employment. The number of self-employed workers has been on a “steeper incline” over the past 25 years, & in the past year grew 4 times faster than the number of paid employees, the CIBC report said.
On compensation, the bank said low-paying full-time jobs have risen faster than mid-paying jobs over much of the past 2 decades, which in turn have risen more quickly than high-paying jobs. And in the past year “the job-creation gap between low- & high-paying jobs has widened,” with low-wage full-time paid positions rising at twice the pace of high-paying jobs.
The retail sector, which tends to be much lower-paying, is the largest source of employment by sector in Canada. It’s also a industry that may soon start to see job losses as Target ... & other retailers such as Sony, Smart Set & Mexx close shop amid fierce competition.
Definitions of job quality – & what constitutes “precarious” work – vary. Wilfred Laurier University economics professor Tammy Schirle cautioned against relying too heavily on assumptions that part-time work is necessarily of poorer quality than full-time employment.
Dr. Schirle noted that employers who offer flexible work schedules are often praised for accommodating work-life balance for families.
“We rally behind startups, innovators & the ambitious small-business owner, & then say the work they’ve created for themselves is substandard?” she said in an interview Thursday. “Part-time & self-employment often reflect poor-quality jobs, as does much of full-time employment, but that is not always the case. They are certainly important indicators of what is happening in our labour market, but I’m reluctant to use these as key indicators of job quality.”
It has been a difficult stretch for some job seekers. Going from laid off, to underemployed, to contract work, Richard Vanderbeek, 24, is now looking for a job – again. It’s something he has done 4 times in less than 3 years. He wants to start a career in customer service, but can’t seem to get his foot in the door.
“I’ve found that even customer-service jobs, some of them would require university programs & they’re still only offering minimum wage to start,” said Mr. Vanderbeek, who lives in Toronto. “Even with the amount of schooling you have to have to get it, there’s still no real incentive through pay.”
While finding work has been difficult, finding work that pays enough, offers enough hours to offset the cost of living & provides advancement opportunities has been next to impossible. After leaving culinary school unfinished, Mr. Vanderbeek worked at a delicatessen & then a butcher. The deli downsized & eliminated his position, & after 6 months with the butcher, he knew he had to make a change.
“I realized that my max earnings I could make was essentially $14 an hour,” Mr. Vanderbeek said. “I had to move on in order to find something that could pay me a little more down the line.”
Federal Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre responded to the CIBC report’s findings with a statement that said Canada’s job creation record is one of the strongest in the Group of Seven.
“Given the ongoing uncertainty in the global economy, it is important that our government continue to keep taxes low for families & job creators,” he said.
Mr. Tal, at CIBC, says the situation shows a mismatch in the labour market, where “we have many educated people are compromising on contract jobs, on self-employment jobs, low-paying jobs because they don’t have the skill-set that those high-paying jobs need. And that’s why their bargaining power isn’t as powerful.”
“We do need the young people to be a bit more practical about what they do, in terms of field of studies.”
In the meanwhile, the general public kept & still keep upgrading their skills, especially their educational skills, to the point that now the Canadian public has a surplus of designated accountants, MBAs, Masters, engineers, & other professionals. Technology is also doing its fair bit in removing those jobs which require the repetitive kind of work or even easier work, e.g. bookkeeping (quite a few cloud-based services are available for self-employed people to do their own bookkeeping, & hence, bookkeeping profession is going into oblivion).
So, as Benjamin Tal says, a section of the public, especially the "employer" section now has choices in hiring for whatever position they want to fill. Since, they are receiving hundreds of resumes for every position, they are making the criteria harder or just relying on networking, which creates its own set of hurdles for job seekers.
One of these criteria are now employers requiring years of related work experience & university-level education even for an entry-level job. Since, the employers have choices, they are also "bullying" their employees by giving far more work to one employee & making employees feel that they better do what they are given, at the measly salary they are getting, because they are replaceable & there will always be someone who is willing to do their work for the same amount of money.
On top of that, as per one of the reports shown on CBC's National in April 2015, that Canada is creating a lot of positions, but they are mostly part-time & contracts (as this article also says). Why? Because, employers save on paying for benefits, & they still get their work done.
So, the whole lifestyle of the public is on a downhill slope. Incomes are falling. Benefits are decreasing. Hours of work are increasing. Productivity is rising. Competition for a fewer & fewer office jobs are decreasing. Thanks to free trade deals, like NAFTA & TPP, manufacturing will keep flowing out of labour-expensive, developed countries to cheaper-labour developing countries. Not all people can become MBAs & become managers in a decreasing number of companies or not all people can become entrepreneurs, either.
Result: Immigrants who are skilled & mobile will move out of the country (Canada, US, UK, Europe) to wherever they find better opportunities in terms of salary, career advancement, raising a family etc ... essentially, brain drain. People who are not mobile or not skilled have no choice but to stay put & endure whatever conditions they are given. But that has a limit. Eventually, those people will rebel & then, there will be chaos & destruction, as we can see, what's been happening in Greece.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Canadian economy continues to create jobs at a fairly steady pace, but questions are mounting over the quality of those new positions.
Several reports have concluded that the country’s job market is not as strong as it looks & now a study from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce paints an even worse picture. According to the bank’s analysis, job quality has fallen to its lowest level in more than 2 decades. A CIBC index that measures 25 years worth of data on part-time versus full-time work, paid versus self-employment & compensation trends, has fallen to its lowest level on record.
The Bank of Canada’s new measure of labour market indicators also showed “slack” in the jobs market & it has noted “ongoing labour market challenges” such as a low participation rate among core-aged Canadians. Another report from the Toronto-Dominion Bank last month pointed to more weakness than the unemployment rate suggests.
The trend has implications for the broader economy. A lack of hours along with a prevalence of lower-wage jobs & self-employment underscore why many households are having difficulty shoring up savings & why consumer spending may taper off this year.
As household finances get squeezed, the risk is that debt – already near record levels – could grow further, leaving people more vulnerable to any type of economic shock. “After every recession, [job quality] goes down, but it doesn’t fully catch up. So there is almost a permanent loss every time that there is a shock,” said Benjamin Tal, CIBC’s deputy chief economist. This is why the decline in employment quality “is more structural than cyclical.”
One notable shift is that a smaller portion of the labour market now has higher bargaining power, or high-paying jobs, while a larger segment has lower bargaining power, he said. “This is the main reason why the income gap is rising, which I believe is the number one economic, social issue facing the country in this decade.”
The CIBC index tracks 3 components, all of which are showing a deterioration. The first indicated that the number of part-time positions has risen “much faster” than that of full-time jobs since the 1980s. (Over the past year, though, some of this has reversed as full-time jobs rose faster). Self-employment is another measure, as economists tend to view it as less stable &, on average, lower paying than salaried employment. The number of self-employed workers has been on a “steeper incline” over the past 25 years, & in the past year grew 4 times faster than the number of paid employees, the CIBC report said.
On compensation, the bank said low-paying full-time jobs have risen faster than mid-paying jobs over much of the past 2 decades, which in turn have risen more quickly than high-paying jobs. And in the past year “the job-creation gap between low- & high-paying jobs has widened,” with low-wage full-time paid positions rising at twice the pace of high-paying jobs.
The retail sector, which tends to be much lower-paying, is the largest source of employment by sector in Canada. It’s also a industry that may soon start to see job losses as Target ... & other retailers such as Sony, Smart Set & Mexx close shop amid fierce competition.
Definitions of job quality – & what constitutes “precarious” work – vary. Wilfred Laurier University economics professor Tammy Schirle cautioned against relying too heavily on assumptions that part-time work is necessarily of poorer quality than full-time employment.
Dr. Schirle noted that employers who offer flexible work schedules are often praised for accommodating work-life balance for families.
“We rally behind startups, innovators & the ambitious small-business owner, & then say the work they’ve created for themselves is substandard?” she said in an interview Thursday. “Part-time & self-employment often reflect poor-quality jobs, as does much of full-time employment, but that is not always the case. They are certainly important indicators of what is happening in our labour market, but I’m reluctant to use these as key indicators of job quality.”
It has been a difficult stretch for some job seekers. Going from laid off, to underemployed, to contract work, Richard Vanderbeek, 24, is now looking for a job – again. It’s something he has done 4 times in less than 3 years. He wants to start a career in customer service, but can’t seem to get his foot in the door.
“I’ve found that even customer-service jobs, some of them would require university programs & they’re still only offering minimum wage to start,” said Mr. Vanderbeek, who lives in Toronto. “Even with the amount of schooling you have to have to get it, there’s still no real incentive through pay.”
While finding work has been difficult, finding work that pays enough, offers enough hours to offset the cost of living & provides advancement opportunities has been next to impossible. After leaving culinary school unfinished, Mr. Vanderbeek worked at a delicatessen & then a butcher. The deli downsized & eliminated his position, & after 6 months with the butcher, he knew he had to make a change.
“I realized that my max earnings I could make was essentially $14 an hour,” Mr. Vanderbeek said. “I had to move on in order to find something that could pay me a little more down the line.”
Federal Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre responded to the CIBC report’s findings with a statement that said Canada’s job creation record is one of the strongest in the Group of Seven.
“Given the ongoing uncertainty in the global economy, it is important that our government continue to keep taxes low for families & job creators,” he said.
Mr. Tal, at CIBC, says the situation shows a mismatch in the labour market, where “we have many educated people are compromising on contract jobs, on self-employment jobs, low-paying jobs because they don’t have the skill-set that those high-paying jobs need. And that’s why their bargaining power isn’t as powerful.”
“We do need the young people to be a bit more practical about what they do, in terms of field of studies.”
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