FAR too many young Canadian workers are either unemployed or underemployed and governments must come up with a strategy to solve the problem – a problem that has been with us persistently since the 2008 recession, says Hassan Yussuff, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.
‘Young people want to work and contribute. They want to build lives for themselves but too often they can’t find work, or they are stuck in short term, part-time, and poorly paid jobs.
Governments have let them down by failing to act. We owe them better than this.’ Yussuff was responding to the release by Statistics Canada of its Labour Force Survey for May 2014.
The official unemployment rate was 7.0% in May and the rate of underemployment was 14.7%. In the 15-to-24 age group, 13.3% of workers were unemployed and 30.4% underemployed.
The underemployed can include part-time workers who want to work full-time, or people who have given up searching altogether. Neither group would be described by Statistics Canada as being unemployed, but they are underemployed.
Yussuff also pointed to Statistics Canada’s 2011 census data, which showed that 42.3% of young adults aged 20 to 29 lived at home, compared to 27% in 1981, noting that their having to live at home will have an impact on how much their parents can save for their own retirement.
According to the Conference Board of Canada, employers in Canada spent only $688 per employee on training in 2011, while US employers spent on average, $1,071 per employee – approximately $400 more per employee per year than in Canada.
‘Our governments talk about investing in jobs, but the fact is that Canada has fallen far behind. It’s time to walk the talk and for governments to provide deliberate labour market strategies that will allow people to find full-time, meaningful work,’ said Yussuff.
Statistics Canada reported a loss of 29,000 full-time jobs in May, and a gain of 55,000 part-time jobs.
Over the past 12 months, all job growth has been in part-time work, with a net gain of 112,000 part-time jobs.
This May more than 1 million workers in Canada were working part-time jobs but wanted full-time work. This is the highest number of underemployed part-time workers in May since Statistics Canada began collecting this information in 1997.
Job growth continues to be centred in the private sector, with year-over-year declines in the public sector and among self-employed workers. Compared to last May, there were 6,000 fewer workers in educational services and 23,000 fewer workers in public administration.
The construction industry has seen the largest year-over-year decline in employment, with a loss of 39,000 jobs. Job growth was strongest in the health care and social assistance sector.
The unemployment rate for persons who have been landed immigrants for five years or less was 12.4% in May, slightly higher than May 2013 when it was 12.1%. The unemployment rate for newcomers who have been landed immigrants for 5-10 years was 8.7%, an improvement from 9.9% in May 2013.
This is still markedly higher than the 7.0% unemployment rate for Canadian-born persons, indicating a need for services to assist recent newcomers in the Canadian job market. The Canadian Labour Congress represents 3.3 million Canadian workers.
• Hiring private companies to deliver public services and finance infrastructure projects is costing Ontarians more and delivering less, says a new short film from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU/NUGPE).
‘When it comes to value for money, privatisation has been an epic failure in Ontario, yet both Conservatives and Liberals continue to aggressively promote it,’ said OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas. Citizens who are concerned about how their money is being spent need to find out more about privatisation, and our new video helps them do that.’
The film Epic Fail: A Short History of Privatisation in Ontario is accompanied by a research paper documenting 20 years of privatisation failures. The paper looks at case studies involving highways, information technology services, medical lab testing, hospital construction, air ambulance service and more. ‘We’ve paid a high price for privatisation in this province and it’s time there was a serious public debate about it,’ Thomas said.
Noting that the NDP’s Andrea Horwath has been the only leader of a provincial party to agree to debate the issue, he added, ‘like corporate tax cuts, privatisation transfers wealth to private investors and away from public services, boosting profits but cutting wages as it goes. We don’t need more of it.’
Written by veteran journalist Bill Gillespie, Epic Fail features interviews and commentary from representatives of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Ontario Health Coalition, the Parkland Institute and others.
‘In Ontario, judges, auditors, consultants, journalists, government ministers and ordinary citizens have looked at case after case of privatisation as it actually works in the real world,’ said Thomas. ‘Here’s what they’ve found: it doesn’t.’
• What might happen if Tim Hudak (leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario) gets his way and 100,000 public sector jobs are eliminated?
Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data shows that fewer personnel in hospital nursing units is associated with more problems for patients. CIHI reports the number of personnel per patient (or, more exactly, ‘per weighted case’ – a measure which allows patients with different needs and conditions to be compared). CIHI also reports the number of ‘nursing-sensitive adverse events’ for surgical and medical hospital patients – a measure of errors.
While austerity has meant that there has been a drive to reduce the staff-to-patient ratio, there still remains significant variation. Some hospitals still have higher staffing ratios (if not for long). In total, there is data for 116 Ontario hospitals in 2010-11.
For hospitals that have been able to maintain at least 7% more staff per patient than the average, there was an astonishing 19.6% fewer ‘adverse events’ for medical patients and 19.4% fewer adverse events for surgical patients.
Increased errors are also found if you compare Ontario with the Canada-wide average. An Ontario patient receives a full 6.1 hours less care by personnel in nursing units than the Canada-wide average, with the gap between Ontario and the rest of Canada growing. Accordingly, over the last three reported years, nursing-sensitive adverse events for surgical and medical patients averaged 5.1% higher in Ontario compared to the Canada-wide average. If Ontario could be removed from the Canada-wide average, the discrepancy would be quite a bit higher.
For hospital workers, BEWARE: the finger of blame will be pointed at you for the errors. The responsible politicians will deny any connection to staff cuts, even while the cuts make these errors more and more inevitable.
