A new StatCan report regarding May’s Employment Numbers indicates that employment in Canada decreased by 42,000 in May and unemployment rose to 8.4% - Canada’s highest rate for 11 years. The job losses were concentrated in Ontario, where unemployment reached 9.4% - its highest value in 15 years. In fact, Ontario lost 60,000 jobs in May, bringing total losses since last October to 234,000 or 3.5%. While Ontario accounts for 39% of the total working-age population, it has experienced 64% of overall employment losses since the start of the labour market downturn. The remaining provinces saw little changes in May, and Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan even experienced increases in employment.
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Research that we have done at VicinityJobs.com/FairyLakeJobs.net indicates that the ongoing recession has impacted hiring demand in York Region more severely than in most other suburban GTA communities. Our research is based on analysis of hundreds of thousands of postings for jobs in various suburban GTA communities published on all major online job boards and on a number of employer web sites.
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According to a report released by Statistics Canada recently, 681,400 people were receiving regular Employment Insurance benefits in March 2009, up by 65,300 or 10.6% from the previous month. The strongest percent increases occurred in Alberta and British Columbia, but this to some extent is due to the fact that these provinces had low unemployment rates compared to other parts of the country at the beginning of the recession – so now they seem bound to catch up with the rest of the country. (more…)

We released a new report today that measures the impact of economic slowdown on hiring demand in Ontario’s 905-communities surrounding the city of Toronto, and looks into what may be in store for the future. (more…)

In early February, we released the Vicinity Jobs monthly hiring index reports and expressed cautious optimism that Ontario’s job market may have bottomed already (read article). Unfortunately, the February numbers (which we just released) dashed our hopes.

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Being unemployed is rarely a pleasant experience, but it is particularly hard in recession years. Good news are in a depressingly short supply these days, and maintaining a positive attitude is difficult if you are among the thousands looking for work now. Even when you find and apply for jobs that fit your skills and background, your applications seem to vanish without generating a single response (let alone getting you job interviews).

Yet while the recovery ahead of us may be long and plagued with uncertainties, GTA’s January’s job market reports produced by the Vicinity Jobs Network indicate that the market may have just turned the corner.

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On September 3^rd (with a federal election looming) Steven Harper announced his Government’s decision to “invest” 80 million dollars into Ford’s future. Everyone looked happy: The Government of Ontario, the Opposition, the CAW… The Opposition and the CAW said that this decision was long overdue. Canada’s Industry Minister Jim Prentice claimed that this “investment” will help make the Canadian automobile industry more competitive and will “create or sustain” up to 750 jobs. A week later came another sobering announcement: Ford announced the elimination of one of its shifts and the layoff of 500 workers from the same plant where Jim Prentice had made his announcement the week before.

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This year’s G8 summit in Japan resulted in a commitment from the leaders of some of the world’s largest economies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. It is ironically symbolic that this resolution was made in a place not far away from another Japanese city where a similar – but much stronger – commitment had been made a decade ago. If the Kyoto treaty failed to produce the results it was intended to produce, why should the G8 summit’s resolution be any better? (more…)

There has been much talk lately about introducing tolls on Toronto’s roads. The major arguments of those in favour are:

1. Tolls will help bring in much needed money to be invested in the GTA’s public transit.
2. Tolls will take some people off the roads by making it more expensive to make non-essential trips.
3. Tolls will encourage people to take public transit instead of driving, which will in turn help ease gridlock and protect the environment.

The problem with all these arguments is that they simply don’t apply in today’s Toronto: They would apply if we had an adequate, integrated, reliable public transit system. Until we do, road tolls will be just another way to tax working people.

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On May 27, 2008, CIBC released a report analyzing the impact that increasing oil prices will have on Canadian’s lives. The report comes to some interesting conclusions.

One of the conclusions is that higher oil prices will eventually reverse globalization, resulting in price increases for lower-value items across the board. At some point, transporting low-value items from East Asia will no longer be worthwhile as transportation cost will make them too expensive. But don’t hold your breath: The manufacturing of such items will not come back to Canada or the United States. It is more likely to go to other places with cheaper labour that are closer to our home markets, such as Mexico and other Latin American countries.

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