While B.C.’s unemployment rate has continued to shrink as pandemic restrictions loosen, a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released this month shows that not all is as good as it seems.
“The top line good news story hides the deep inequalities in the impact of the pandemic, particularly by gender and by race,” said Iglika Ivanova, the centre’s senior economist and public interest researcher.
Between February and April 2020, about 25 per cent of workers lost their jobs or the majority of their hours, largely concentrated among people in industries where people could not work from home. According to Ivanova’s report, those workers were most likely to work in lower-paid workers in part-time, temporary and more precarious jobs.
Many of these workers were women and many were racialized or Indigenous. The report provides three reason as to why women were particularly hard-hit; they were more likely to work in sectors such as hospitality, food services arts and culture which were targeted in restrictions, they were more likely than men to need to take care of children when schools and daycares closed and they were overrepresented in part-time and temporary job which were the first to be cut when the pandemic hit.
And when these women were also Indigenous, racialized, disabled or otherwise marginalized, the report noted, the intersection of inequalities made it even more likely that they would lose their jobs. While overall, while one-quarter of all workers lost their jobs, nearly one-third of women did.
These workers who lost their jobs, Ivanova said, have been hurt at each side of the pandemic – more likely to lose it at the start and less likely to regain it throughout. Ivanova said that while the decisions made to protect public health – closing down restaurants, large-scale events and other gatherings – may have been logical, they’ve had the unintended side effect of pushing these workers out of the workforce for as long as 16 months.
“So we see some sectors and some industries like accommodation and food services, and like personal services, and, you know, the recreation and culture services, you know, impacted, you know, in a much bigger way than other than other sectors of the economy,” Ivanova said.
“Those service sectors that that bore the brunt of the pandemic are the lowest paying sectors, and they tend to employ a lot more women and a lot more racialized and Indigenous workers than the sectors that did well.”
While the virus did not target any specific groups, Ivanova said it laid bare “the fact that even in the 21st century, our labor market remains quite occupationally segregated.”
The workers “are already disadvantaged on the number of other fronts, because they are the low wage, the young workers, the immigrant workers, the racialized workers.”
As B.C. looks towards economic revival, and as provincial and federal supports fade, Ivanova said that efforts need to focus on bringing the groups most hurt by the pandemic up to par with where they were prior to the pandemic – or even higher.
Ivanova said that as restrictions continue to lift – B.C. is now in Step 3, allowing all but the biggest of events and international travel – more people will regain their jobs. But not everyone will, and government programs need to keep that in mind.
“This is what really worries me now as we go into the summer and we’re going to start seeing better (unemployment) numbers come out of Canada… that that will make people conclude that the job is done, and we don’t need to do anything else, while in reality, these top line good news stories are really hiding enormous inequalities, and the people who bore the brunt of the pandemic are going to be left behind,” whether it is because they were unable to return to the same hours as they had pre-pandemic or people no longer actively looking for a job. The last group, Ivanova said, doesn’t factor into traditional unemployment numbers – only people actively job searching are counted – but could include people who worked in industries that cannot operate due to COVID restrictions. Those people, she said, may not be looking for jobs – because they don’t exist – but they will need government aid or retraining programs for career fields that are in-demand now.
The report outlined three policy initiatives to help workers still struggling.
The first involves large-scale, people-centric investments into both physical and social infrastructure.
”The care economy, which is currently gendered, racialized and undervalued should be rightfully recognized as the foundation upon which the larger economy is built,” the reported stated, noting that investments in this field involve not just building more child care and long-term care facilities or housing but also increasing the budget for the wages that pay the people who provide these services.
Second on the CCPA’s list is to “make all jobs good jobs.
“As we think about creating more jobs, we need to focus not just on the quantity, but on the quality of jobs we’re creating,” Ivanova said, “that those jobs are good jobs, that they pay a living wage, that they offer enough hours, so people don’t have to have three or four of them to make a decent living.”
Some of that, she acknowledged, was done during the pandemic when B.C. created a single-site order for care homes, ensuring that employees were based at just one facility.
“We absolutely can afford a lot more. Canada is a very rich country and B.C. is a very rich province,” Ivanova said. “It was just a choice that we may note the baby for more, and I hope is one of the things we learned from
The third initiative the CCPA proposes is to overhaul the income and social support systems to make them both easier to navigate and sufficient to support the people who rely on them.
The federal government is currently reviewing the Employment Insurance system and Ivanova hopes that one of the things to come out of that is a minimum level of support, instead of calculating benefits a percentage of prior income.
“If you were a minimum wage worker earning part time, and you were barely scraping by now you’re gonna get 55% of that? That’s nothing,” she said.
“I hope we see the Canada Emergency Response Benefit rates of $2,000 a month as a kind of floor.”
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
