Long-term Joblessness in Canada

So Canada is much better off than all other OECD countries? We have economic growth of supposedly 2%. How can this be? Statistics magic saves the day. Lose well paying full-time jobs, gain low wage part-time jobs, and call it even. Unfortunately your average citizen here in Canada knows first hand that job and economic statistics do not put food on the table. Long-term joblessness, as I know first hand, is a common and growing problem. We need to overstate that this personally decimates the job seeker but society overall. The negative implications long-term joblessness or unemployment are widespread and damaging to society in general. The newly jobless scale back discretionary purchases. The long-term jobless change their philosophy of life and spending, resulting in radical systemic changes to our retail and marketing environments. Health deteriorates, resulting in higher long-term health costs. No matter if you are currently employed, long-term joblessness will affect you directly or indirectly.

Tavia Grant has published yet another excellent article in the Globe and Mail about long-term joblessness, citing much the same issues as her last article. I have commented on her previous article.

Unlike the past, many jobless are university educated, many, like myself have masters degrees. It is not like these people lack relevant skills or are lazy, but that jobs are not available. Returning to school to rack up even more debt, only to find your “new skills” cannot get you a job would be disheartening and financially disastrous. This is not an issue of a lack of relevant skills, which can be somewhat fixed by extra education. And do not think that Canada’s educational institutions are great at predicting what will be relevant in the workplace: They have no crystal ball.

Companies have retrenched, no doubt. They squeeze profitability higher by forcing their current employees to do more for less. This strategy can only go so far. If an organization is lacking in needed skills, no amount of switching jobs within the company will solve this problem. Canadian companies are some of the most conservative and inward looking that I have known, always taking the easy way. How about hiring people with non-standard degrees, and trying new hiring practices. No one has a lock on finding innovative solutions to old problems. No certificate will guarantee you will not hire the same stale skills you have in-house. Maybe if more creative hiring practices were used, Canada’s productivity would increase. Mix up the same old same old.

Getting rehired is trickier as companies are still keeping a tight lid on costs, making them more reluctant to boost payrolls. At the same time, competition for jobs – especially high-quality, permanent jobs – is more fierce.

The philosophy of large companies in this recession has put educated and skilled job seekers in a quandary. Companies need innovative thinkers with the right skills, overlook the masses of the qualified jobless and continue to look for their ideal candidate. How about taking a chance on someone who has transferable skills and training them to your specific needs? Smart people are adaptable and teachable. Liberal arts and those with non-standard backgrounds may be much more creative than your in-house crowd.

One possible result may be the most brutal of all – past recessions show the problem fades as people, particularly older workers, simply give up ever rejoining the labour market.

“A lot of the adjustment will be brute-force attrition,” says Laval’s Prof. Gordon.

I would not wish to come to the conclusion nor tell someone else that they will never ever find a well paying job. Is this how our recession will end, by having regular people give up their livelihoods, live on the charity of food banks for the rest of their days? Those who do not have gainful employment cannot take care of themselves, which leads to increased health issues and a worsening society. No one benefits from this.

Many commenters put the blame on China and other developing countries. We certainly have exported a huge number of jobs to China, so much so that even if we wanted to buy domestically, this is quite difficult. When low skill and low wage manufacturing jobs go offshore society in general is able to buy goods at a lower price. Unfortunately this also throws many citizens out of work. Is it possible to retrain these people, get them gainful employment and still enjoy lower cost foreign products? I am not sure.

The other unfortunate issue is that Canada has lost the ability to control the quality of products available in Canadian stores. Not all foreign made products can be tested for safety, and so much of China’s export products have been deemed unsafe. In our effort to reduce the cost of retail products we have increased the safety risk for society at large. China has a generally uneducated population and a much lower standard of safety. It is not that the Chinese make unsafe products (in general, milk and illicit products not withstanding), it is that their standard is far below ours. This needs to be fixed, and fast.

Is it possible to buy cheaper yet safe import products yet keep our citizens working and prosperous?

I read the comments people have made and I still hear a certain amount of blame the individual, the unemployed person. This is a structural problem with our economy that governments at all levels are failing to address.

London Ontario has an Ontario Works profile of 50% collecting have post secondary degrees; 25% have graduate degrees. This is a university city with several health research projects/institutes, a biotech incubator centre, what’s left of an NRC site and a community college. On one hand we run campaigns to keep grads here but for what reason? I chose this city 22 years ago. This is my fourth recession as a working person; the first was early 80’s. I have been out of work over 2 years now. This recession is different – I have three degrees, 2 certificates, continuous learning record to stay current in my fields of expertise and interest. What I keep hearing is that I am overqualified, underqualified or not appropriately qualified, eg. “how can you do finances if you don’t have a CGA? how can you do H/R if you don’t have an HR designation?” Credentialling will be the legacy of this recession; I can see the day when a store clerk will be required to have a certification. I have availed myself of every possible training program, not-for-profit assistance, etc. but, yes, I have given up.

I’ve returned to school to retrain from the administrative/management/fund raising field in nonprofits to social work. But until governments make serious changes and stop just counting jobs little will improve. The effects of long term joblessness are far more serious than this article indicates: suicide, depression, family violence, substance abuse including alcohol, apathy and people moving to the street or shelters. We have to start valuing our citizens again, seeing them as people not resources. We have stop counting jobs and look at the quality of jobs that are being created. And finally let business put there money where their mouths are – if you value liberal arts university education as you keep saying you do, let’s see it in your hiring practices. (buchanan123)

I do not know the answer, but I share his frustration. If we all survive this recession, we can then look back and try to tease out learnings for the future. Until then, life grinds on.

Addendum Nov 17 2010: Recession hit hard, recovery came slowly for immigrants

But Canada seems slow to figure out that, while it meticulously selects skilled immigrants on one hand, it fails to get them jobs once they’re here. And the repercussions, as the country begins to rely almost entirely on immigration to grow its aging work force, are real.

“Educated newcomers to Canada are faring worse than the rest of us,” said Monica Patten, Community Foundations president.

I am a intern-pharmacist ( a training needed to become a pharmacist) working at Shoppers Drug Mart as a volunteer. It is 32 hour a week. I check presciptions, counsel the patients and do most jobs. For my survival I have to work part time in Tim Horton’s where I get paid minimum $10/h and I know most people hate me because I am East Indian.

Is’int funny while doing a job(pharmacist) where I should get paid at least (20-25) not getting a penny, but I need it to get a license at least for a year. . Thanks to Tim Horton’s for my survival. (randy)

“Educated newcomers to Canada are faring worse than the rest of us” .

We hear these cries all the time.

In many ways, these “immigrants” are better off than born, bred and educated Canadian students. The latter are in dire straits–many saddled with mountains of debts and no work and money to repay same.

Whereas these “immigrants” have the option of going back to plum jobs in their home countries, our very own students have no such choice, but to get stuck on dead-end jobs or living a life on welfare.

Thanks to the media for highlighting their “plight”. I don’t buy their argument! Why not exercise their right of return? If their home countries are thriving and they want to stay there, will there be any need for them to immigrate here in the first place and complain?

Not finding a job is the signs of the times. Get used to it. Stop complaining. Or catch the next plane back. (rupie)

I am sure immigrants do go through hardships – but why do I feel that the underlying assumption of articles like these is that Canadian-born people don’t face the same problems?? My husband is a pharmacy student and, yes, he too had to volunteer at Shoppers – you need the experience to be better positioned for jobs, but they won’t give you a paid position. I went back to university part-time to upgrade my skills – we both financed our education ourselves, which means that babies have to wait. I wouldn’t even think of having a baby with no income!!! Canadians too face hard choices – they just don’t get the press coverage. (GinaTO)

Addendum April 02 2012: Skilled immigrants urge investments into talents already in Canada: Yet another unfortunate story of a foreign trained medical doctor who passed his Canadian medical exam that cannot get the required internship in order to practice here in Canada.

Addendum Feb 25 2013: Half of GTA and Hamilton workers in ‘precarious’ jobs : An interesting yet frightening perspective on how fragile our lives can become when unemployed, underemployed or jobless. United Way report: It’s More than Poverty: Employment Precarity and Household Well-being