Despite these unfavourable conditions, Canada created 272,000 new jobs in 2012, its best showing since the recession. By year-end, the unemployment rate had fallen to a four-year low of 7.1 per cent.
All the jobs lost in 2008-2009 meltdown have now been recouped, as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty frequently reminds Canadians.
The unemployed and underemployed are skeptical. What they want to know is: Where did all these new jobs come from? Their resumés are still disappearing into a giant void. They haven’t heard about any openings. They aren’t seeing any positive signals.
Social agencies are dubious too. They wonder if the official numbers are telling the real story. What about all the discouraged workers who aren’t included in Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey? What about the workers who are described as self-employed but aren’t earning enough to cover their costs? What about the temp workers who can’t get enough hours to climb over the poverty line? What about the highly trained university and college graduates who are languishing in entry-level service jobs? What about the part-time, contract and casual workers who can’t get full-time, steady work?
Jonathan Bendiner, an economist who recently joined TD Economics after eight years at the Ontario Ministry of Finance, attempts to explain the confusing signals in his inaugural report entitled Where did the Jobs Come From? A Quick Look Back at 2012.
He partially succeeds. He points out that the employment gains were uneven; some industries took on workers, others shed jobs. The uptick in employment did not bring wage increases (except in Alberta and Saskatchewan), meaning most Canadians didn’t feel better off. And he reminds readers the manufacturing sector, while picking up steam, remained far below its pre-recession level.
It’s when Bendiner gets down to the details that the picture becomes blurry.
The strongest area of employment growth in 2012, for example, was educational services, with 94,600 new jobs. Yet most provincial governments were retrenching. Most school boards had hiring freezes. Most teachers unions were fighting to save the jobs and benefits their members already had.
Bendiner, who had an inside view of the turmoil in the education sector in Ontario, calls the job surge “a bit curious.” He also finds it unsettling that the Labour Force Survey presents a rosier view than Statistics Canada’s other measure of job growth, the Survey for Employment Payrolls and Hours.
Nor can he explain how Quebec could have accounted for almost 40 per cent of last year’s national employment increase, given its “sub-par” economic growth. It might reflect “a bounce-back from the decline seen in 2011,” he suggests.
Some the gains stemmed from developments other economists have identified, Bendiner says. The softwood lumber industry came back to life thanks to a pickup in residential construction in the U.S. The financial sector continued to be a source of strength. And the manufacturing sector reversed a multi-year string of job losses.
He also highlights a couple of developments that haven’t penetrated convention wisdom. Oil and gas producers ended their hiring spree; Alberta’s 2012 job growth was largely in utilities, transportation, warehousing and finance. The same was true of Newfoundland. Only Saskatchewan was actively recruiting workers.
Nowhere in the paper does Bendiner look at the quality of the jobs that came onstream, their duration or whether they came with benefits such as drug coverage, dental care, vision and pension contributions. Nor does he examine the age distribution of the employment gains.
It is heartening that job growth was one of the “top positive surprises of 2012.” But a few blocks from Toronto’s bank towers, Canadians are still waiting for evidence they can see and trust.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Carol Goar
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