Morning business file: Unemployment up (9 a.m.)
edmontonjournal.comPublished: Friday, February 09, 2007
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/local/story.html?id=afdc57e7-2102-4351-a818-4a2c9dffd0d3&k=0
Summary
Canada’s economy continues to improve, producing 89 000 more jobs in January. However, unemployment rate increased to 6.2% from 6.1% in December because of an influx of job-seekers. Statistics Canada said together British Columbia and Alberta produced a total of 56 000 more jobs, powering the national employment growth. Alberta unemployment rate was unchanged. A record of 63.4% of working-age Canadians held part time and full time jobs in January. Since October, almost two-thirds of the employment has been increased by part time jobs. Jobs in information and recreation, professional and scientific services, hotels and restaurants and natural resources account for the increase in January jobs. 32 000 of British Columbia jobs came from the skiing industry, where favorable snow conditions attracted many people. Alberta’s 24 000 jobs were mostly full time. However, due to the influx of job seekers, unemployment rate in Alberta did not decline. The province produced many more jobs in areas such as performing arts, recreation and gambling, manufacturing and natural resources. Ontario’s unemployment rate rose from 6.1% to 6.4% because more people are in search for jobs. While Quebec produced 15 000 jobs, unemployment rate increased to 7.7% as more people sought jobs.
Relationship and Reflection
The article addressed the different types of unemployment we studied in this chapter. The fact that many jobs are produced in Canada, yet unemployment rate still increased is because of frictional unemployment. This type of unemployment is of short duration and the individual is expected to find a job quickly. Frictional unemployment tends to be higher when economic conditions are good. In this article, the economy is doing well because plenty of jobs are available. When such condition is present, people will be searching for jobs, or leave one job to look for a better one. Frictional unemployment is also known as the job-search unemployment. The mass increase of job searchers could possibly be graduates from college and university. It takes time for them to acquire information about the jobs that can utilize their skills. Because they are looking for jobs, they are classified as unemployed at this moment. More people are unemployed than employed, so unemployment rate increased. Also, many people are working part time so there is a measure of hidden unemployment in this classification because these individuals are not working as many hours as they would like and they are not contributing fully to the Canadian economy. Also, these part time workers may be considered as underemployed because they may be employed but not at jobs that fully utilize their skills. These unemployment rates are measured in January, so seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is taken into account. All these are taken into consideration to produce accurate unemployment rates.
When summer arrives, more jobs will be available and employment rate is likely to increase. This is because more teenagers will be in search for jobs in the summer. For example, playland and PNE hire over hundreds of students in the summer. There's also lots of sales associates positions available at stores. Also areas such as constructions, tourism, recreation and agriculture will produce more jobs, thus increasing employment rate. However, the same thing in the article might happen again. Becuase of the increased amount of job searchers, there isn't enough jobs for all of them so frictional unemployment will result and the unemployment rate will increase. Let's just hope that won't happen!
posted by wini_lao @ 5:27 PM
4 comments
