[Bruce_the_vii]

Noooo. In the past immigrants came here and got reasonable jobs. In the 1950s and 1960s they came and worked at unionized jobs at major companies. They had houses,kids and a pensions plan. Now the world is more competative and growth in good jobs is difficult. The economy is growing in McLabour, all Canadian cities are full of this. The country is going backward in this regard. The population growth is fueling the low wage sector. Economic growth is not of interest unless it's in average jobs. If this wasn't a problem you could continue to immigrate as you suggest. In the meantime we have to build better jobs first.

[CommanderSock]

Quote:

Noooo. In the past immigrants came here and got reasonable jobs. In the 1950s and 1960s they came and worked at unionized jobs at major companies. They had houses,kids and a pensions plan. Now the world is more competative and growth in good jobs is difficult. The economy is growing in McLabour, all Canadian cities are full of this. The country is going backward in this regard. The population growth is fueling the low wage sector. Economic growth is not of interest unless it's in average jobs. If this wasn't a problem you could continue to immigrate as you suggest. In the meantime we have to build better jobs first.

Heh, actually the McLabour is statement is funny, and true. When they said "job growth" during the boom period, this meant job growth in call centres, McJobs and Tim Hortons opening more branches.

This is not immigrants fault. Or immigration Canada. We still need immigrants, we still need growth.

What we also need to do is smash the remaining unions in this country into oblivion, remove the inter-provincial trade barriers COMPLETELY, invest in more hard infrastructure projects such as high speed trains and highways between urban regions and rural and suburban areas, promote growth in northern Canada through aggressive tax policies, promote growth in the science and math sector (we have too many accountants and salesman already).

We also need to tackle our soon to be completely broken health care system.

Our macro economic policies have been solid, for both the libs and cons. We should continue to build upon them.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Actually immigrants are connect to the bottom by domino effects in the labour market. This is the Knowledge Economy, high tech jobs are created and people move up - and there's a domino effect to the bottom.

Going forward there is going to be retirement of in excess of a million boomers and this will really open up the job market. If they don't also flood the country with skilled immigrants to meet the new demand people will move up.

[OnTheIce]

Don't you have another place where you can post topics and talk to yourself?

[Bruce_the_vii]

Sorry to bore you, I'm sort of a one topic poster. However you'll find jobs like taxes are political - should you have any interest in politics what so ever, my boy.

[Axeman]

Bruce_the_vii wrote:

Ok, my post was very brief. A major aspect of our economy is immigration. Yet economists do not pay attention to what is going on in that area. My statistic shows that it is out of control but unreported. What has gone wrong. Very probably there are few economists paying attention to the situation simply because of lack of funding. So this is a social problem. I phrased this "there are no economists". Makes sense to me. Anyway, thanks for asking.

Okay, there are lots of economists who research immigration. Other economists, the vast majority of economists even, have no interest in immigration because it's not important to their area of study or expertise. I don't have funding to study immigration and I don't WANT any 'cause I have plenty of other things to work on. It's not someone else's fault that YOUR particular area of interest isn't being researched. Think of it as an opportunity for you to do some original inquiry, but don't call us out 'cause we're not following your interests. What you're doing is like blaming doctors for heart disease because they're busy trying to cure cancer.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Thanks for responding Axeman, no one else did. I said immigration but the statistic above is really the labour markets. Very oddly economists have no idea what is happening in the labour markets. So this is pretty central in the field. Specifically the official unemployment figure doesn't catch the change in people working but the employment rate does. By the measure of the employment rate unemployment in the City of Toronto in 1996 was 22% and no one noticed it. This is not a depression as bread winners find jobs while people marginally attached to work become discouraged and sit out. This is a national problem as well.

I've followed immigration issues for 17 years and there are only a few economists in Canada that publish papers on it. No more than five out side of the government. And they do this part time as they are professors.

[Axeman]

You see, that's what I take offence to! I am a labour economist, but my interest has little to do with immigration. What measure of unemployment are you using, because disgruntled workers are not unemployed. If you are on to something, send me more details. Send me a working paper. Explain to me exactly what your think you've discovered and what you suspect and I'd be happy to check it out for you and give you some feedback on your thesis, but you have to stop saying things like "economists have no idea..". In the words of Homer Simpson "Lisa, just because I don't care doesn't me I don't understand."

[Bruce_the_vii]

Oh, dear - an actual labour economist. Thanks for responding. I have some statistics that I worked up that are pretty clear. I'll post them.

[Bruce_the_vii]

The Two Unemployment Indices

Statistics Canada reports labour force data monthly and people such as the MPs rely on it but guess what, it’s no the labour force. It drops out hidden unemployment. The labour force survey asks if a person is unemployed and currently looking for work. If you might like to work but are not looking you are not considered unemployed rather you are hidden. Statistics Canada does not survey these hidden unemployed and this is a critical over sight. The difference is semantics, the wording of the labour force survey. The statistic “employment rate” captures the change.

As an example of how large an oversight this is I worked out the changes to the hidden data over the troubled period of the early 1990s. In all the surveyed cities, 100% of the data, hidden workers dominated the employment changes. This is changes in the hidden work force only and does not include structural hidden unemployment.

The data is the best to worst years for each city, not a specific time period.

…..unemployment increase but hidden………….hidden increase
…………and not reported…………………………as a percent
………(percentage of labour force)………………of total increase

St. John’s…………………...5.9%............................100%
Halifax……………………...4.6%...........................100%
St. John……………………..6.5% ………….…….84%
Saquenay……………………10.6…………………..88%
Quebec………………………6.8…………..………71%
Trois Rivieres………………..5.9…………..………100%
Sherbrooke…………………..10.6………..………..74%
Montreal……………………..4.5………….……….71%
Ottawa……………………….8.6………….……….82%
Sudbury………………………5.0………….………100%
Oshawa……………………….8.0………………….100%
Toronto……………………….8.0…………..………62%
Hamilton……………………...10.0………….……..100%
St. Catherine’s…………………5.9…………………83%
London………………………..6.9………………….83%
Windsor……………………….8.6…………………100%
Kitchener………………………8.7………..……….77%
Thunder Bay…………………..9.8…………………100%
Winnipeg………………………2.8% (only)…..……52%
Regina………………………….4.9…………….….. 100%
Saskatoon………………………3.7…………………74%
Edmonton………………………4.2…………………100%

Vancouver………………………5.5………………..100%
Victoria…………………………3.5…………….….100%

[Bruce_the_vii]

OECD Employment Rates 2006
Percentage of people working
of age 15 to 64


Country
Australia 72.2
Austria 70.2
Belgium 60.4
Canada 72.9
Czech Rep. 65.3
Denmark 76.9
Finland 68.9
France 62.3
Germany 67.2
Greece 61.0
Hungary 57.3
Iceland 85.3
Ireland 68.1
Italy 58.4
Japan 70
Korea 63.8
Luxembour --
Mexico 61
Netherlands 72.4
New Zealand 75.2
Norway 75.2
Poland 54.5
Portugal 67.7
Slovak Rep. 59.4
Spain 65.7
Sweden 74.5
Switzerland 77.9
Turkey 45.9
UK 72.5
USA 72
Israel 50.9


Turkey's employment rate, for an example, is abismal. However the official unemployment figure does not reflect this. In Turkey people that drop out of the labour force are not financially independant, obviously. They're poor, but become discouraged at the prospect of find work and just stay at home.

[romanP]

CommanderSock wrote:

Canada has been trying to increase its population since it was a British colony. There will always be pro and anti immigration folks. They've been around since the first French settlers.

Why would economists spend all their time documenting and researching immigration. We have jist of what is going on, and we realize we need a higher population to sustain the country and its growing infrastructure in the long run.

Immigration is a part of economics. If you don't consider immigrants in your economy, how can you accurately track things like unemployment and who is unemployed, job creation and who is being employed, average household income, and pretty much all of the things that you have to take into account when considering the economy?

[Bruce_the_vii]

Yes. However in my 17 years of reading up on immigration I found that Economists ignore it. The labour market texts quote studies that show immigration does not affect unemployment and they just stop there.

[romanP]

As Axeman says, various economists study various different things that they specialise in. If nobody has researched your topic, then maybe you should get yourself a degree in economics and study it yourself. Reading a few books is a good start to get some general information, but there are a lot more than seven books on economics. I have a feeling that the information you're looking for probably exists, just not necessarily in the places you're looking for it. There is a lot of information on very technical subjects in any field that a layperson is not really going to know what to do with or know how to interpret, so it is not all that accessible to the public, either because of where the information is stored, or simply how it is recorded.

[Axeman]

[quote="Bruce_the_vii"]The Two Unemployment Indices

Statistics Canada reports labour force data monthly and people such as the MPs rely on it but guess what, it’s no the labour force. It drops out hidden unemployment. The labour force survey asks if a person is unemployed and currently looking for work. If you might like to work but are not looking you are not considered unemployed rather you are hidden. Statistics Canada does not survey these hidden unemployed and this is a critical over sight. The difference is semantics, the wording of the labour force survey. The statistic “employment rate” captures the change.

Okay, I think you're beef is with the statistic, in which case, you need to look at some different stat. You're absolutely right, the labour force does not include disgruntled workers. I still don't understand what your thesis is, but am I correct in suggesting that what you believe is we need to have better types of jobs to encourage people who aren't looking for work to try to participate in the labour force? Is that what you're saying?

The only reason I'm in on this dicussion is you started blaming economists when you're real beef is with statisticians at StatsCan and the way they've cooked up the Canadian unemployment rate calculation. Am I right? If you want to discuss "underployment" and incentives to improve labour market participation, let's go, tell me your solution. Either way, though, underployment and disguntled workers are not things economists ignore. If I'm correct in deciphering your beef, I will send you some journal articles to peruse.