Methods To Maximize Employment In Canada

The average person wants a job as it supplies a means in the form of wages to pay for goods and services. From the government point of view; jobs are a means to create goods and services needed for public consumption. The government is happy enough to pay workers to dig holes for half the day and then spend the rest of the day filling the holes back up again. Jobs are merely a means to end and the economy keeps chugging along as long as people have money to spend for the things they need. But fortunately the government realizes that people are happier if they are working at a job which contributes to society as opposed to merely digging holes and filling them up again.

The rate of unemployment in a country is a strong indicator of the strength of the economy and the health of its society. If the economy is strong, anyone who wants to find a job should have little problem finding one, and therefore a low unemployment rate. A country experiencing a recessionary period will suffer a higher unemployment rate.

One of the reasons Canada entered into free trade was the high expectations for increased trade volume and job creation. Not a bad plan when you consider the flow of dollars through the Canadian economy and its spin offs of increased productivity and decrease in the unemployment rate. But what really happened when Canada entered into free trade was a series of events which brought the country into a recessionary period. Canada experienced a net loss of 138,000 jobs in the manufacturing section and had the worst rate of productivity among the G-7 countries. The desire to protect Canadian industry and jobs has given employers more bargaining power with regards to national programs such as unemployment insurance. Employers deemed employment insurance too generous and too costly and negotiated decreases to the employers' portion. The program was also revised to make it much tougher to collect benefits. Essentially the revisions bring the Canadian social safety net more inline with programs in the United States. But what the revisions have done to the Canadian employee is lessen the number of dollars in Canadian wallets and contribute to the growing increase in national poverty levels.

The Canadian economy undertook some serious changes and redevelopment thanks to the signing of the free trade agreement. Although a massive number of jobs were lost to the introduction of free trade, a large number have been regained over subsequent years. The government has some options when it comes to making the job market in Canada more appealing and thereby maximizing employment. One such method is modifying the traditional work week.

It can be argued that it is more advantageous to be employed in Europe as opposed to an employee in Canada. In France for example employees work roughly 43 days less a year than the average Canadian. But how can companies in these countries manage to run effectively in comparison to North American companies? The answer is simple. The employees operate at a greater level of productivity. For example, the Irish "work 6 per cent fewer hours, on average, yet the economic output per person beats ours by 14 percent."

Canadians have too much of an imbalance with a small portion of the workforce working too many hours and a large number working not enough hours. By evening out the number of hours worked a larger amount of the workforce now has a greater percentage of the disposable income distributed amongst more hands which keeps more money flowing through the economy. Those with the highest incomes at the present time will experience a downsizing of their current income, but they will reap the benefit of quality time with their families.

But does the adaptation to working fewer hours work? A company in Finland offered employees the chance to work fewer hours at the same rate of pay, when businesses down the street were offering triple the amount of wage and required employees to work considerably more hours. The Finnish employees working fewer hours were found to have less sick days and worked more productively while at work.

But if the concept of a shortened work week has been proven to work in other areas, why has no one suggested the concept in Canada? A 1994 Canadian advisory group on working time and the distribution of work reported on the advantages of a "shorter working time and how a more equitable distribution of work could contribute to job creation." The report concluded "that a phased-in reduction of work time over a 10-year period could be a win-win situation for Canada. The measured unemployment rate would fall. Real GDP levels would be basically unaffected, but labor productivity would be higher. And governments overall budgetary picture would become rosier with fewer people needing social assistance or employment insurance. Another big benefit would be a substantial increase in the leisure time for those who were working unusually long hours."

Another popular theory to keep Canadians working is to use government money to bail out failing Canadian industries. By keeping Canadians working in an area of Canada where a major industry is failing, government is able to support the incomes of all the residents in the area. Those not directly employed by the industry will still be affected by a massive loss of income in an area as residents will no longer have cash to spend on goods and services.

But is it smart to continually dump buckets of money into a failing industry when it is the major employer in the area? Would the government not be better to let the industry fail, and spend the investment cash on retraining and services