Category Labour markets
But you try and tell the young people of today that… and they won’t believe ya
I've noticed a couple of recent media stories on the plight of youth ([1],[2]), and I have to say that I've seen worse.
The Basic Income: Go big, or go home
I used to blog fairly regularly about the Basic Income (aka Citizen's Income, aka Guaranteed Annual Income), but the passage of a decent interval of time, Kevin Milligan's recent Economy Lab columns ([1] , [2]) and Erin Anderssen's long article in Saturday's Globe and Mail gives me an excuse to revisit the issue and perhaps […]
Out-sourcing your own job
The Radio-Canada news report sounded like an item from The Onion: Postal worker contracts out his own job. In economic terms, it makes perfect sense for a letter carrier to sub-contract. Say Postman Paul is earning $150 after tax per day for delivering the mail, but can make more money working in construction. (Before taxes, […]
More evidence on minimum wages, employment and poverty
A year ago, I brought attention to a Canadian Public Policy article on poverty and the minimum wage in Ontario. A notable finding of the study was that the overlap between those who earn minimum wage and those who are in poverty was surprisingly small, small enough to conclude – as I did – that […]
Another view of the sluggish US labour market
My latest post at the Globe and Mail's Economy Lab talks about the distinction between the net changes in employment reported by the Labour Force Survey and the gross flows in and out of employment. In preparation for that post, I looked up the data from the US Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) […]
Why would we assume that high earners are price takers in the labour market?
Greg Mankiw's column in the New York Times makes the point that available evidence – in the US as well as Canada – suggests that high earners have higher labour supply elasticities than do workers lower down in the income distribution. As a result, increasing income tax rates on high earners would have disproportionately stronger […]
P-data, Q-data, and L-data
Economists have got lots of P-data and Q-data, and we pay a lot of attention to it. I think we don't have much L-data, except anecdotal, and we don't pay much attention to the hard L-data we do have. P-data is data on the prices at which goods are traded. Q-data is data on the […]
Sectoral shifts and the Canadian recession
Last December, I wrote a post on the effects of the recession on various sectors of the Canadian economy. The main results were: The service sector was barely affected; most of the losses were in the goods sector. Within the goods sector, manufacturing took the brunt of the job losses. Of course, the losses in […]
Should EI benefits be extended again?
One thing I didn't mention in the discussion of Canada's exit strategy was the question of the extension of Employment Insurance benefits. Last September, the House of Commons voted for a temporary extension in the duration of the eligibility period, and this temporary measure is set to expire next month. The US just passed a […]
HST and jobs: more studies in applied orthogonality
Some economic policy debates are about jobs. Most aren't about jobs, or shouldn't be. But far too many of them end up being about jobs, even though the policies have nothing to do with jobs. Frances once explained the advantages of the HST to me. (Note for non-Canadians: the Harmonised Sales Tax replaces a provincial […]
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