Category Labour markets
Canadian Manufacturing Employment: Growth and Decline (But more decline than growth)
Ontario’s budget will be presented today in the wake of new GDP numbers from Statistics Canada showing that Ontario’s real GDP growth was amongst the poorer performers in the country in 2013 (Quebec, NS, & NB were lower). Manufacturing was again singled out as one of the sectors in which Ontario is doing rather badly […]
Feminist framing and general equilibrium theory
Consider a very simple general equilibrium 2X2 example to illustrate my point: Divide the population into two groups: call them "men" and "women". Divide all outcomes into two groups: call them "arts" and "science". Everybody is somewhere in the 2X2 matrix. Here are four questions we could ask of the data: 1. Why are women […]
Alberta Juggernaut Continues…For Now
Friday’s Labor Force Survey release showed total employment and the unemployment rate were little changed and that there has been little overall employment growth in Canada since August. Indeed, total employment shrank slightly in Canada with Quebec and British Columbia faring the worst in terms of the total number of jobs lost. Of course, Alberta […]
The anti-NK model and minimum wages
I present a simple model that has exactly the opposite predictions to the standard New Keynesian model: if the central bank sets the nominal interest rate too high (too low), that will cause an increase (a decrease) in output and employment. If you think that an increase in the minimum wage will cause increased employment, […]
International Employment Update: U.S. Resilience and Australian Exceptionalism
I thought it was time for an updated look at employment creation in the advanced economies given that we are now at just over five years since the 2008-09 Great Recession that walloped world economies. I’ve taken the IMF World Economic Outlook Database employment numbers for the period 2007 to 2013 to get employment levels […]
One Million Jobs
Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has promised to create one million jobs over eight years and plans to introduce his Million Jobs Act Bill in the Ontario Legislature when it resumes sitting on February 18th. Tim Hudak is presenting a five-point plan in his private member’s bill to create jobs that includes among other things […]
Buyers and sellers, bargaining power and recessions, and asymmetric taboos
Think about a model where prices are determined by relative bargaining power. The buyer wants to do the deal, but wants a lower price. The seller wants to do the deal, but wants a higher price. Each threatens to walk away from the deal if the other side refuses to budge on the price. The […]
Efficiency wages and recessions
I'm not 100% sure what Paul Krugman is arguing here, but I think he is probably wrong. And I'm going to take him up on his invitation: "(I’m going to try some formal modeling on all this, but if anyone else wants to jump in, be my guest.)". Not that my modelling here is very […]
So we work harder in Canada, eh?
In a recent blog post, Noah Smith points to some graphs posted by my old friend David Andolfatto. David's graphs show a widening gap between Canadian and US labour force participation rates, with the Canadian rate now outstripping the US rate by some margin. David – having learnt the hard way what happens to people who give […]
What happened to the distribution of real earnings during the recession?
[Note: I noticed an error in some of the graphs a few minutes after publishing the original post.] [Update: Everyone should read Kevin Milligan's take using the SLID data. I'll get back to this in another point soon.] I noted on Econowatch at Maclean's a few weeks ago that average and median real earnings increased […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments