The true size and character of the unemployment
problem in Canada can be partly guaged from the information in figs.1 and 2 attached.
From the Statistics Canada data in Fig.1, for April 2003 we
find:-
Unemployment 1.281
million persons
Not in Labour Force 8.212 million
persons
Employment 15.698
million persons
Labour Force 16.979 million persons.
The “Unemployment Rate” of 7.5% refers to 100 X
(Unemployment / Labour Force) and is the figure customarily referred to in
almost all the media reports. I have numerous newspaper articles on file which
also report this number as if it refers to the numbers of persons unemployed in
real terms; as we will see shortly and based on currently available
information, this understates the true size and character of the problem by a
factor of 4 to 5.
In addition, persons who are not in this
category but unemployed in real terms (E.I. benefits expired, social assistance
recipients, people not “eligible” for either E.I. of social assistance etc.)
are customarily referred to in the media
- again based on Stats Can / HRDC categorisations - as “discouraged
workers”, people who “..have dropped out of the labour force..”, or people who
“…have given up looking for work..”, without any qualifying comment or analysis
- either in terms of numbers, or the
implications for the economy of not dealing with the issue. Further, the
question of what image this creates in the public mind, concerning this large
group of people (currently numbering about 3 million), is conveniently never
discussed.
In addition, if the reader will now look at the
Statistics Canada web page located at:-
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/lfs-en.htm
then he / she will see, among other things, that it includes two graphs - one showing the trend in the number of persons “employed”, the other showing the trend in the number “unemployed” - and after a quick glance at the latter, it is immediately obvious from the figures that it in fact only refers to the “official unemployed”. There is no similar graph concerning the group referred to as “Not in Labour Force”. The overall impression which this creates, in the author’s opinion, is that this group “Not in the Labour Force” is just an unimportant detail.
In fact, as we will see in a moment and based
on the information currently available, this population group “Not in the
Labour Force” currently contains about 3 million people - who are mostly
employable social assistance recipients (34% of the group) and discouraged
workers (31% of the group), with the remaining 35% “unknown” in terms of their
status or intents. The remaining 5 million (out of about 8 million) in this
group are students or retirees.
If we now look at fig.2 (“Ottawa’s Hidden
Workforce”, 1998, page 5) , the reasons will become apparent. Out of the
total of 211,600 persons in this group, “Not in the Labour Force”, at the time
of the report, there were estimated to
be 80,500 persons (see bottom left hand
corner of fig. 2) who could be regarded as willing and capable of working if
allowed to – 38% out of the group. “Allowed”, in this context, means “subject
to removal of all barriers of every type”. Additionally, out of the group
referred to as “Employed”, there were an estimated 25,000 who were “Under-employed”
composed of involuntary part-time workers, skilled immigrants and
post-secondary graduates, which
represents 6.2% of the group referred to as “Employed”.
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