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The following is a summary of an
interesting study on the Canadian labour force undertaken by economists at
Ryerson Polytechnic University. The study can be accesses at http://www.research.ryerson.ca/~ors/research/job.html
Ed Weick
The Job-Poor Recovery: Social Cohesion and the Canadian Labour Market A Research Report of the Ryerson Social Reporting Network Mike Burke and John Shields Senior Researchers, Ryerson Social Reporting Network Ryerson Polytechnic University Summary
Highlights Recent developments in the job market reveal a disturbing pattern characterized by job-poor growth. The kinds of jobs being created are undermining the foundation for middle class life in Canadian society. The middle is being hollowed out and an hour glass labour market created. This hour glass labour market is featured by a segment of the workforce enjoying an important measure of employment security and sufficiency of market-based incomes versus a larger and growing element of the labour force facing insufficiencies in employment security and/or labour market earnings. The source of the growing gap in the Canadian labour market is the deteriorating quality of employment. The Canadian labour market has undergone profound restructuring over the last three decades. Influenced by the forces of globalization, rapid technological change and a radically altered public policy environment, contemporary employment patterns have been restructured away from full-time tenured forms of work in an economy featured by rising living standards and increased expectations, towards flexible forms of employment in a just-in-time economy marked by growing levels of employment contingency, economic polarization and social exclusion. Labour market polarization is jeopardizing the prospects for a secure foundation for family life in Canada. This study offers a unique contribution to understanding the dynamics of Canadian labour market change. Especially noteworthy are the following observations drawn from the analysis based on the Ryerson Social Reporting Network new labour market indices: over 52 percent of Canadian workers earn less than $15 per hour; more than 37 percent of working single mothers earn less than $10 per hour compared to 26 per cent for all employees that constitutes an annual salary of only $18,200 based on a yearly 35 hour work week; 3.2 million Canadians (about one-fifth of the labour force) are structurally excluded form the labour market in that they are either unemployed or significantly underemployed; some 45 percent of adult employees between the ages of 25-59 are employed in flexible forms of work (less than full-time tenured workers). This represents a highly polarized employment pattern; flexible forms of employment (part-time, contract, full-time non-tenured) are on average between $5 to $8 per hour more poorly compensated than full-time workers with tenure; flexible workers lack job ladders and have few opportunities to increase their real income earning capacity over time; 53 percent of the adult workforce or 6.7 million individuals are in vulnerable employment situations because they lack employment stability and/or market income sufficiency; single mothers, and more generally women, are significantly over represented among flexible workers and the vulnerably employed; while higher levels of education are positively related to a better individual positioning in the job market, overall the education effect represents only a minor influence. Gender, single mother status and age are more influential in determining the quality of employment one holds; trade union membership and public sector employment protect workers from the worst inequality found in flexible and vulnerable forms of work. Main Findings Behind the veil of the official story, which speaks of sustained economic growth and a job creation boom, lies a deeper reality of a crisis within the Canadian labour market. This is a crisis of sustaining employment, a crisis centred around the deterioration in the quality of the job stock both in terms of employment security and income sufficiency. Rising levels of economic marginalization, polarization and increased market vulnerability are contributing to the erosion of Canadian social cohesion. The labour market, we must remember, is a social as well as an economic institution. Threats to the quality of the job stock consequently result in social as well as economic deficits, especially in the context of a diminished publicly supported social safety net. A significant gap exists, however, in our understanding of the quality of the job stock in Canada. Traditional measures, certainly in and of themselves, no longer adequately capture the various dimensions of economic well-being and job quality for ordinary Canadians. Reports of the GNP/GDP, the number of jobs created, and traditional unemployment measures, for instance, give us a very incomplete picture of economic health in a global economy in which levels of labour market polarization are rapidly expanding. Yet governments continue to defended their economic records largely on the basis of job creation figures without taking into account the quality of employment generated. Consequently, there is a need for innovative and alternative ways of approaching the question of sustaining employment. The Ryerson Social Reporting Network has constructed three new indicators that measure three key dimensions of sustaining employment: exclusion from the labour market, wage polarization and employment vulnerability. The Structural Exclusion Index attempts to capture the number and condition of people who want work or who want more work but are unable to find it. The Exclusion Index allows us to contrast official unemployment figures with a more meaningful measure of labour market exclusion that estimates unemployment but also various states of underemployment. The Exclusion Index reveals a labour market exclusion rate of 20.3 percent for May 1998. In short, real labour market exclusion is nearly two and one-half times higher than the official unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent. In other words, more than 3.2 million Canadians were unemployed or faced significant states of underemployment. It appears that there is a cyclical floor of structural exclusion of some 20 percent. That is, even at the top of the economic cycle the structural exclusion rate in Canada fails to fall below one-fifth of the labour market. A second indicator, the Adult Wage Polarization Index measures variations and inequalities in the work experiences of the waged labour force among prime age workers aged 25 to 59. It enables us to divide the waged job stock into stable and flexible components allowing us to track inequalities in employment conditions and examine correlates of these forms of work. 37.1 percent of the adult workforce, or more than 3.5 million employees, were flexible workers in May 1998. There is a wide difference in median hourly wages between stable and flexible work $17.44 an hour for stable full-time workers with tenure versus $12.73 for flexible workers, a $4.71 difference. Given that this age group is the cohort for whom career-centred jobs are primary, that well over one-third are in less stable flexible employment is cause for concern. The Polarization Index is a telling indicator of a significant deficiency in the job stock in Canada. Finally, the Adult Employment Vulnerability Index measures employment stability and sufficiency. The Vulnerability Index enables us to assess the extent of the employment deficitsrelated to instability and employment income insufficiency in the labour market. Once again this measure focuses upon prime age workers between the ages of 25 to 59. It is among such adult workers where questions of earning sufficiency and employment security are most salient. The Vulnerability Index shows that 53.6 percent of the work force, or more than 6.7 million individuals, were in vulnerable employment relationships in May 1998. Some 33.2 percent of adult labour market participants, the precarious, have one employment deficit that is they lack either employment security or employment income sufficiency. An additional 12.9 percent, the peripheral, possess both these employment deficits. And a further 7.4 percent, the disposed, faced total exclusion from the labour market they were fully unemployed or discouraged workers. The issue of sustaining employment is of concern not just because of the lived experience of those vulnerable and excluded workers but also because of its effects on the larger social health of the nation. Marginalized, detached and disposable workers become alienated citizens. Rising levels of economic polarization and poverty place enormous stresses on the social fabric. A labour market characterized by too few good job opportunities poor-job growth weakens social cohesion. The Canadian crisis of sustaining employment is resulting in a parallel crisis of social cohesion. This parallel crisis carries with it substantive economic and social costs to individuals, families, communities and the body politic. |
