Canada’s Job Market / A virtual hotbed of contradictions

Canada’s job market is a virtual hotbed of contradictions.

On the one hand, employers and their associations claim there is a labour shortage. Yet 1.3 million workers are officially unemployed and tens of thousands of Canadians have either given up looking for work or are underemployed in contract and precarious jobs.

You’d think that markets — if they worked the way we are told — would respond to so-called labour shortages in a variety of positive ways, including improvement in full-time decent work with good wages and benefits attached to them as a recruitment incentive. You would think overall job quality would be improving. You’d think Canada would be overflowing with good jobs.

Instead, temporary jobs are growing twice as fast as permanent jobs and part-time jobs are now one in five in the country, the highest percentage on record.

CIBC World Markets noted in June of this year that its Canadian job quality index has been demonstrating a clear downward trend, 14 per cent lower than the 1980s.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Good jobs — still hard to find – Columnists – The Telegram.

You should also read Canada’s Skills Gap / The economy faces a deep structural problem says says Isidore LeBlond, chief executive of Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists

“The skills mismatch means we’re constantly being questioned by employers looking for the next worker – the worker with the right skill set,” says Isidore LeBlond, chief executive of CCTT. “We want to make sure we’re teaching the right (skills),” he adds. Continue reading »