Category Labour markets
A New Policy Think Tank
Well, there is a new policy think tank in Canada and they have just released a commentary on the minimum wage.
The Real Minimum Wage
I was a bit surprised that the recent upsurge in unemployment in Ontario in June, which was especially concentrated amongst youth (individuals aged 15 to 24 years), did not generate much discussion about the impact of the minimum wage. Ontario’s adult minimum wage rose 75 cents on June 1st to hit 11 dollars per hour. […]
Why do unions bargain for health benefits?
Unionized workers are more likely to have health insurance and other non-wage benefits than non-union workers (for US evidence see here or here (gated)). Yet it is not clear why. Some obvious explanations do not stand up to scrutiny: 1. Health insurance receives preferential tax treatment. 2. Workplace insurance is efficient, because it avoids the adverse selection problems […]
Unemployment, aggregate demand, and search/matching
For what it's worth, I thought I would lay out my own views, after reading John Quiggin and Noah Smith. This is what I think: 1. Fluctuations in the unemployment rate from year to year are mostly caused by fluctuations in aggregate demand. Very standard, boring, demand-side monetarist/keynesian view of the business cycle, that predates […]
Ontario Employment: Yours to Discover
Well, the latest Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey numbers paint a rather bleak picture for Ontario with employment dropping by 34,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rising from 7.3 to 7.5 percent. However, Ontario’s employment picture is much more complicated than that and regional numbers suggest that some parts of Ontario – well the GTA […]
Employment and Investment: the great Canadian disconnect
[This is a guest post by Hashmat Khan of Carleton University and Nyamekye Asare of the University of Ottawa.] Can policies stimulating private investment deliver higher employment? Maybe, but investment and employment have become disconnected recently in Canada. John Taylor has noted a strong negative correlation between investment and the unemployment rate, and argued that […]
Pre Debate Warmup: Ranking Employment Across Ontario Political Regimes
Well, tonight is the Ontario election debate and inevitably job creation will come up as a topic. On the one hand, Tim Hudak will have to deal with the fallout over his Million Jobs Plan. On the other hand, Kathleen Wynne and Andrea Horwath will need to demonstrate what their plans for employment growth in […]
One Million Jobs One More Time
The debate over the Ontario PC “Million Jobs” platform has certainly gone ballistic over the last few days and having posted on the subject in January when the plan was first announced I certainly think its worth another post. When the “Million Jobs” plan was first mentioned in January, my response was to look at […]
Flogging a Dead Horse II: A million jobs anyway?
This post was written by Mike Veall of the Department of Economics at McMaster University. I have been asked by a few people about my statement here that “I would hope that whoever is in charge, whoever wins the election, that eight years from now we would have a million more jobs …I would expect the […]
Flogging a Dead Horse: Research the Progressive Conservatives misinterpreted was flawed
This post was written by Mike Veall of the Department of Economics at McMaster University. David Reevely and Jim Stanford, followed up by Paul Boothe, Mike Moffat, the Globe and Mail and others have shown that the Ontario Progressive Conservative millions job plan does not follow from the research it is based on. For example, […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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