Jobs, Jobs, Jobs – What’s Going On?

Jobs are in the news today, in Canada and in the United States.

The good news is here at home where we added 43,000 more jobs last month, a fivefold increase over the 8,000 forecast. This comes atop 46,400 added in January.

The bad news is in the United States. The Americans lost 63,000 jobs in February, following a loss of 22,000 jobs in January. The New York Times calls it the, “…fastest falloff in the labor market in five years.”

“I haven’t seen a job report this recessionary since the last recession,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “This is a picture of a labor market becoming clearly infected by the contagion from the rest of the economy.”

So, what’s going on in Canada? Are we defying gravity? From the Financial Post:

“Mind boggling,” said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-dominion Bank. “I’m obviously a little shocked right now.”
“The last two-months blowout in employment certainly goes against this notion that Canada’s economy is really beginning to slow, especially after the Bank of Canada statement earlier this week.”

The manufacturing sector, hit hard by the strong Canadian dollar, shed 23,700 workers in February but that was partially offset by job growth in the construction sector. The goods-producing sector lost 12,500 jobs while the services sector gained 55,800.”

Nobody seems to be able to account for the disparity between the Canadian and US numbers. With buoyant world grain markets and energy markets, are we better poised to withstand an American recession and, if so, for how long?

Canada’s good news would be a lot more welcome if it wasn’t for the weakening situation to the south. Now that NAFTA and Rust Belt unemployment have become a prominent issue in the presidential campaign I don’t think our job performance is going to be welcome to those who blame NAFTA for their misfortune.

 

Too Smart For Our Own Damn Good

Canadians are academically top-heavy and, unless we change that, it’ll cost us.

A report in today’s Toronto Star notes that Canada ranks #1 as having the greatest percentage of its working force with a college or university education.

“The latest census data shows that Canada stands first in the developed world in the proportion of people who hold credentials from either college or university – 48 per cent, compared with 39 per cent in the U.S. or 32 per cent in Australia.

The data also shows Canadian women outnumber men at university, more than half of immigrants have a university degree compared with 20 per cent of Canadians born here, one in five post-secondary grads has taken a business or marketing-related course – but only 10 per cent of young adults hold a certificate in a skilled trade.

Too, the census reveals a young generation studying different fields than their parents – more chefs than mechanical repair, for instance, more computers than construction, more transportation than health services.”

This is all well and good until your toilet backs up or you need a machinist or some other skilled trade. There we’re in trouble. Canada is facing a critical shortage of skilled tradesmen (& women).

From welding to drywalling there are not enough young people entering our trades.

Nothing new to this story. It’s a problem that’s beset some sectors of industry since the 60’s.

My Dad was in the specialty steel business in Ontario. Most of his customers were tool and die companies working for the automotive and aeronautical industries. Those companies were dependent on highly skilled machinists and tool makers but there were never enough.

The Soviets actually helped ease Canada’s problem. Their invasion of Hungary in ’56 and Czechoslovakia in ’63 brought quite a few highly skilled tradesmen to Canada as refugees. By the time the 70’s rolled around, a lot of them owned their own, highly profitable tool and die companies. After they were absorbed, however, the trade shortage problem returned.

Why? A major reason was that the apprenticeship process wasn’t sufficiently attractive to draw newcomers. Kids could earn a lot more taking an unskilled factory job than they would ever receive during their years as an apprentice.

Another problem is our public attitude to labour of any sort. We’re snobs, plain and simple, and before long we may come to regret our snobbery.

When I entered law school I was surprised at how many of my classmates admitted they were there largely due to their parents. Some had absolutely been groomed for it from childhood. It was mandated.

The upshot? We’re awash in lawyers and bereft of machinists. Make sense? Of course not.

From one end of this country to the other we need to change all this and, while government and the private sector need to do a lot more, so do we as individuals and, especially, as parents. Remember, Jesus was a carpenter.