Working Better: Creating a High Performing Labour Market in Ontario - This paper by Metcalf Research Fellow Tom Zizys explores how Ontario’s labour market system has been profoundly altered and profiles promising models that can help build a better labour market system that works for everyone.
Falling Poverty Among the Elderly - This blog posting from Andrew Jackson details the decline in poverty among the elderly and suggests some potential reasons for this Canadian success story. Read the post here. [Source: CSRL-news]
Pipelines Connecting Families to Good Jobs - Many Americans in low-income neighborhoods don’t have jobs that provide supports like paid leave, health benefits, and career advancement. This publication is first in a series describing the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s efforts to link residents, schools, and community organizations with employers, agencies, and officials to help families obtain good jobs with benefits. Download the report here. [Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation]
Changes to the Guaranteed Income Supplement - The Government of Canada has made changes to the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income seniors. Learn more here. [Source: The HRSDC Newsletter]
2006 Census: Earnings, income & shelter costs - Statistics Canada has released detailed analysis of data from the 2006 Census on earnings and income. Also available are several tables containing 2006 Census data on shelter costs. Learn more here. Get the full report, Earnings and Incomes of Canadians Over the Past Quarter Century, 2006 Census here. [Source: CSRL newsletter]
Financial Help in Vulnerable Neighborhoods - Financial assistance from family and friends is an important resource for lower-income families dealing with difficult economic circumstances. These two papers examine what percent of respondents in low-income neighborhoods gave financial help, either to family and friends or to other people they live with, in the last 12 months and what percent of respondents in low-income neighborhoods received financial help. Learn more about who gives by clicking here and who receives by clicking here. [Source: Urban Institute]
Understanding the Low-Wage Labor Market - This report presents findings from a survey of US private-sector employers, focusing on the labor market for less-skilled workers. The survey focuses on employers' most recently filled jobs that require no more education than a high school diploma. This group of jobs includes both entry-level jobs — those requiring minimal skills and experience — as well as "next-level" jobs — noncollege jobs demanding higher skill and experience and potentially offering higher wages and benefits. Learn more here. [Source: The Urban Institute]
Income Security & Stability During Retirement - According to Statistics Canada, the extent to which the pension system enables individuals and families to maintain living standards achieved during their working years after retirement has, in the past, not been well understood. A new study indicates that for workers with average incomes, family income falls after age 60, declines until age 68, and then stabilizes at approximately 80% of the income level they had at age 55. In contrast, low-income individuals experience little change in income as they move through the retirement years, largely because of the income maintenance effects of the public pension system. Learn more here. [Source: Charity Village]
Vulnerability to Population & Employment Decline - This study from Statistics Canada is among the first to create a conceptual framework suitable for gauging how vulnerable rural and urban communities in Canada are to population and employment declines, using demographic and economic characteristics. Download the study here. [Source: CSRL-news]
Hourly Earnings in Canada - Hourly earnings of managers, as well as those of professionals employed in business, finance and computer and information systems, increased faster than those of any other occupational groups during the past 10 years, according to a new study. On the other hand, blue-collar workers in manufacturing, clerical employees and salespeople in retail trade saw virtually no growth in earnings. Learn more here. [Source: CSRL-news]
Employment Insurance for Temporarily Unemployed - Canadians have access to a variety of income supports when they become unemployed. Many also have access to employment-related services like job preparation and training. This second issue of Maytree Policy in Focus is about income benefits relating to Employment Insurance (EI). Download the issue here. [Source: Maytree]
Website to Support Workplace Learning - The National Adult Literacy Database (NALD) has launched NALD@Work, a website dedicated to workplace literacy in Canada. This Internet database of information and resources offers a variety of resources, including program models, and learning and research materials. "As the workforce becomes more knowledge-based, people need higher literacy levels," said CEO Katherine d'Entremont. "If people don't continue to learn or to read or to study, their literacy levels are not going to remain constant; they are going to decline. At the same time, the workplace requires higher literacy levels, so the gap is widening." Visit the website here. [Source: Charity Village]
Economic Security Fact Sheets - Chock full of information about income, spending habits and poverty among Canadian families, the Economic Security fact sheets are the latest in CCSD's Stats & Facts series. Along with the earlier fact sheets on demographics, health, education and families, these latest fact sheets provide a wealth of useful statistical data and analysis about the realities of life in Canada. Learn more here. [Source: CCSD Newsflash]
The Promise of Employer-Focused Strategies - While many skill-upgrade initiatives are based in the public or private education system, efforts where businesses sponsor or play a lead role in developing training also provide an important venue for skill building. This paper examines why employer-focused training is a promising strategy for boosting the earnings of low-income individuals while also providing benefits to employers. Learn more here. [Source: The Urban Institute]
Enhancing GTA Standard of Living Requires Effort - This TD Economics report discusses the relative decline of the Greater Toronto Area’s standard of living against competing jurisdications over the past five years. The report states that this decline poses a serious threat to the region’s future prosperity and calls for future policies underpinned by efficiency and innovation rather than public money. Read the executive summary here or download the full report here. [Source: TD.com and CSRL-News]
Microfinance Misses its Mark - Despite the hoopla over microfinance, it doesn't cure poverty. But stable jobs do. If societies are serious about helping the poorest of the poor, they should stop investing in microfinance and start supporting large, labour-intensive industries. Read this article here. [Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review]
Employment Approaches for Low Income Families - This report by the Urban Institute identifies innovative strategies on a local level to "promote stable employment and wage growth among low-income populations." The report found 12 innovative approaches and 51 programs that use those approaches well. Download the report here. [Source: Alliance Online News]
Economy Hot but Edmonton’s Social Health Not - The Edmonton Social Planning Council’s 2007 edition of Tracking the Trends provides a detailed examination of demographic and social trends that comprise the social health of Edmontonians. Learn more here. [Source: Canadian Social Research Newsletter]
Responsive Workplaces - According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, more and more, working parents have dual -- and dueling -- responsibilities on the job and at home. Some employers have adapted and made their workplaces responsive to working parents. Flexible scheduling that considers employee preference and paid time off, for example, have helped those who constantly juggle work and home. Often, such measures have benefited the employers, too, demonstrating that businesses can do well by doing good. Download the paper here. [Source: HandsNet WebClipper]
Current State of Canadian Family Finances - How are Canada's families faring these days? Those at the top seem to be doing very well. But the rest of us - almost 10 million households - have struggled to keep up. More are working and the second earner, in couples with children, has never provided more income support than they do currently. And they are doing so based on need, not greed. Learn more from the Vanier Institute here. [Source: CSRL-news]
Testing a Community-Based Jobs Strategy - Can communities create meaningful work that is an attractive alternative to Employment Insurance and welfare? A major Canadian study of a new, innovative program is showing this to be true. Learn more from this report here. [Source: SRDC]
Recruiting the Long-term Unemployed - This paper concentrates on the labour demand side to explain the incidence of long-term unemployment. The authors introduce a novel way to infer employer search behaviour, through deadweight loss incidence in wage subsidy schemes. Using a dataset on British firms participating in such schemes, the paper distinguishes between intensive and extensive employer search. The paper concludes that firm size, firm structure and proposed hours worked influence the willingness of employers to recruit from long-term unemployed. Download the full report here. [Source: CSRL-news]
New Architecture for Canada's Adult Benefits - This paper from the Caledon Institute of Social Policy advocates for the modernization of income security programs and supportive services for working-age adults, or, 'adult benefits.' Download the paper here. [Source: The Caledon Institute of Social Policy]
Ontario’s most vulnerable are losing out - Ontario’s disabled have lost out on disability benefits to the tune of at least $6 million, as a result of delays in processing their applications for support by the Ministry of Community and Social Services’ Ontario Disability Support Program and the impact of a provincial regulation, which limited retroactive benefit payments to four months. Download the complete report here. [Source: Csrl-news]
The Dynamics of Overqualification - During 2001, about one out of every five people in the work force who had a university education worked in a job that required at most high school education. Read a summary here and the full report here. [Source: CSRL-news]
Work hours instability - Work hours instability was a fact of life for many Canadians between 1997 and 2001, according to a new study from Statistics Canada. The study follows the working hour patterns of individuals aged 25 to 54. It found the traditional model where workers work the same hours year after year applies to a relatively small share of workers. Read more here or download the full study here. [Source: CSRL-news]
Needs of Employers & Prospective Workers - The Casey Foundation is supporting a number of innovative programs in Baltimore that seek to identify well-paying jobs, with benefits, for currently unemployed or underemployed Baltimore residents. The programs focus on filling the workforce needs of the city’s employers and, at the same time, preparing workers to qualify for positions and move forward on a career path. Read the report here. [Source: AECF Family Economic Success Quarterly Newsletter]
Emerging patterns: A reversal from the 90s - Many labour market trends established in the 1990s have been reversed since 2000. Most of these recent trends intensified in 2005, according to a report released in the Canadian Economic Observer. In particular, it was another banner year for the resource sector. Read more here. [Source: CSRL-news]
Income Assistance Dependence in Canada - This paper analyzes the effects of educational attainment, work experience, labour market training, and earnings supplements on income assistance (IA) dependence. The results suggest that formal education has no significant effect on either the exit rates or the re-entry rates to IA, while economic incentives significantly increase the probability of leaving IA. Download the full paper here. [Source: SRDC]
Nearly Half of Canadians Lack Reading Skills - Nearly half of Canadians aged 16 and over and a surprisingly high percentage of university graduates fail to meet the basic standards for reading comprehension, suggests a Statistics Canada report on literacy skills. Read the article here or access the full Statistics Canada report here. [Source: CBC online]
Decades of Stagnation: Low-paid Work in Canada - Canada’s economy has persisted in paying poverty level wages to one in every six full-time workers for more than twenty years. This, despite an increase of some 43% in Canada’s standard of living over the same period. "Low wages play a bigger role in our economy than they do in many other industrialized countries," says Ron Saunders, author of a new study from CPRN. In Does a Rising Tide Lift All Boats? Low-paid Workers in Canada, Saunders, Director of CPRN’s Work Network, profiles those who work full-time for less than $10 an hour (full-time students excluded), and assesses their ability to improve their situation." Download the paper here. [Source: Canadian Social Research Newsletter]
Brochure Wheel Outlines Successful Workforce - A new brochure wheel developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation summarizes what communities need to do to train and move low-income, low-skilled people into good jobs and careers. The wheel includes case studies and key findings from the Foundation's Jobs Initiative and workforce investments. View the wheel here. [Source: AECF Family Economic Success Quarterly Newsletter]
Parental Employment in Low-Income Families - According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, most children in low-income families have at least one parent who works full-time and year-round. But low-income parents who work are more likely to be employed in service occupations where they are less likely to receive benefits such as health insurance. Read more here. [Source: HandsNet WebClipper]
Waterloo Region’s Guaranteed Income Supplement - Spurred by media reports about a lack of uptake of the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) by low-income seniors, Human Resources Development Canada and the OP2000 poverty reduction project in Waterloo Region collaborated on a successful GIS awareness campaign in 2002. This community story is the first in a series which highlights work undertaken by municipalities now involved in the Vibrant Communities – a pan-Canadian initiative which seeks local solutions to reduce poverty and build more caring communities. Read more here. [Source: Caledon Institute of Social Policy]
Disability Tax Fairness - The Government of Canada established the Technical Advisory Committee in April 2003 to provide advice to the federal Ministers of Finance and National Revenue on how to address issues related to tax measures for persons with disabilities. The full report of the Technical Advisory Committee was released in December 2004. The recommendations include numerous amendments to the interpretation and administration of the disability tax credit; enhancements to the new disability supports deduction; increases to the refundable medical expense supplement and the Child Disability Benefit; and a doubling of the limit that caregivers may claim in respect of a dependant with a severe disability. View the report here. [Source: Caledon Institute of Social Policy]
Improve Auto Access to Pave the Way to Work - A brief from the Brookings Institution argues that the strong link between car ownership and employment suggests automobile access assistance should play a key role in efforts to support low-income workers.Learn more here. [Source: HandsNet WebClipper]
Family-friendly practices in workplaces - A report from the Labour Program, Human Resources Development Canada and Statistics Canada by Derrick Comfort, Karen Johnson and David Wallace, July 18, 2003. From the Executive Summary: "This report examines two human resource practices with the potential to facilitate the harmonization of work and family: part-time work and the provision of "family- friendly" work arrangements, such as flextime, telework, childcare and eldercare services....This...overview of one year's data, provides an indication of the distribution of part- time work and flexible work arrangements in Canadian workplaces and a description of the career development and productivity measures associated with some of these practices." Download the full report here. [Source: OHPE Bulletin]
Changing Workplace: Help for Working Families - Millions in today's economy struggle to keep their heads above water: Some are stuck in dead-end jobs. Others lack health insurance and other benefits. Many struggle to be productive on the job and still meet family needs. Articles in the Summer 2003 issue of FFR, a magazine of the Ford Foundation, examine ways that business and nonprofit groups are easing the stresses of jobs and family life -- from corporate programs that support the needs of lower-wage employees to a program in Durham, N.C. that is attracting new business to the area by taking the lead in training people for high-skilled jobs. Learn more here. [HandsNet WebClipper]
Good Jobs in Good Workplaces - The emerging focus of Canadian labour market and social policy on 'social inclusion' through paid employment is broadly appropriate (with significant caveats). However, positive outcomes for workers critically depend upon the existence of 'good jobs in good workplaces.' Macro-economic factors can play a key role in countering the growth of precarious work and in creating good jobs, but the task cannot be left to the market alone: Labour market regulation is also needed, and there is ample experience in Europe that labour market regulation through collective bargaining can help achieve better employment outcomes at no cost in terms of labour market adaptability, employment and productivity. Read the full report here. [Source: The Caledon Institute of Social Policy]
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