Interesting change in the recession lexicon at the CBC. The country's public broadcaster has joined CTV and the Globe & Mail in using the term jobless in stories about the national unemployment rate, which is up to 8.6 % for the month of June. I suppose it is just semantics, but jobless sounds so much more desperate than unemployed.
The numbers show that the recession is continuing to churn and to wreak havoc in the manufacturing sector. 47,500 full-time jobs disappeared in the month, roughly 40,100 part-time positions were added.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Harper was in Italy telling world leaders not to spend more money to stimulate the economy. Think things have turned around? Tell that to the army of people looking for work in Ontario.
The numbers show that the Government of Canada does not have a strategy and have shown themselves to be inept at addressing the challenges facing a lot of Canadians. These numbers do not reflect those people who are living on severance or are working at lower paying service paying jobs to make the mortgage payment. The numbers do not tell the entire story.
Some good news in Newfoundland and Labrador, it was the only province to report job gains in June. 2,500 new jobs were added to the economy but the unemployment rate edged up a half a percentage point to 15.6%.
President Barack Obama said the US unemployment rate will reach 10 per cent this year, even as the economy begins to emerge from the recession.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Peter, don't jobless rate and unemployment rate measure two different things? I thought that unemployment only counted those who were actively looking for work (i.e., excluding those who aren't working due to disability or choice - e.g., a stay-at-home mother), while jobless counted all of those without a job. If this is correct, the jobless rate would always be higher than the unemployment rate, painting a bleaker picture.
Am I wrong on in my memory of the definitions for unemployment and jobless?
That was my attempted point. Your right, Thats what I took from my economic courses.
he unemployment rate is the percentage of the labour force that actively seeks work but is unable to find work at a given time. Discouraged workers—persons who are not seeking work because they believe the prospects of finding it are extremely poor—are not counted as unemployed or as part of the labour force. (See Employment Rate.)
Unemployment rate =
Number of unemployed people
x 100%
Number of people in the labour force
The number of persons unemployed is not the same thing as the number of people receiving Employment Insurance (formerly Unemployment Insurance) benefits, since not all unemployed people are eligible for those benefits and some people receiving EI benefits for things like maternity leave and fishing benefits may not be considered unemployed.
Some people think that to get these figures on unemployment, the Government uses the number of persons filing claims for unemployment insurance (EI) benefits. But some people are still jobless when their benefits run out, and many more are not eligible at all or delay or never apply for benefits. So, quite clearly, EI information cannot be used as a source for complete information on the number of unemployed.
Commentators are merging the two together. The jobless rate is always going to be higher. The reports today were all based on stats canada's numbers for unemployment.
They interchange jobless/unemployable with our definition of unemployed US reports.
Jobless just sounds so much more desperate than unemployed. One sounds so permanent and without hope
Post a Comment