[Bruce_the_vii]

Any way Lemmy thanks for posting about my concerns on economics. As a Professor you speak from a position of knowledge.

I have got feed back from the MPs in Ottawa that's it's news to them that the official unemployment figure is off by so much. So what ever the number of economists concerned with the official unemployment statistic it's not getting through to the MPs.

I don't have the time or the budget of an economist but I've made some legitimate points about their numbers.

[Bruce_the_vii]

ASLplease ASLplease:

a 14 yr old that stays in school because the labour market is 'soft' is hardly a reason to reduce immigration.

If 25% is significant, then remove him from the numbers that you are quoting.

Sir, I'm a little careful with my arithmetic. The variation in the real unemployment is by people with other means of support. This is Moms with children at home, students that take more schooling rather than work and early retired people that would work if jobs were available. The 15 year olds and 25% don't come into my careful arithmetic. The variation is larger than people would suspect - and there's money in it.

[ASLplease]

Imo, if you(in general sense, ie not Bruce specifically) are not ready, willing, and capable of working, then you are NOT unemployed.

And, if you have voluntarily decided to take yourself out of a 'soft' market, then you obviously are too good to have a job, you value something else instead.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Oh, you can play with semantics. An economist might argue that a person that goes back for a second degree is definitely not unemployed. However my observation is that as soon as the economy improves these gray area people go back to work. It's important because pretty much everyone could use the money. Moreover it's a tonic to the national books to have more people working. In the USA they have a huge defict and getting people back in the labour force is one way of driving up tax revenues.

[ASLplease]

I would have to agree with that economist. Going back for a second degree is definitely not unemployed. And, I shiver at the idea that my choice to leave engineering to become a doctor might trigger an immigration policy presumably reducing a demographic of non-engineers and non-doctors.

[Lemmy]

Bruce_the_vii Bruce_the_vii:

Any way Lemmy thanks for posting about my concerns on economics. As a Professor you speak from a position of knowledge.

I have got feed back from the MPs in Ottawa that's it's news to them that the official unemployment figure is off by so much. So what ever the number of economists concerned with the official unemployment statistic it's not getting through to the MPs.

I don't have the time or the budget of an economist but I've made some legitimate points about their numbers.

Tell you what: if you can send me a PM with your hypothesis, your data and your conclusion, in some half-way coherent format, and I'll look it over. If you can convince me that you're not a nut, I'll let you know whether I think there's merit in moving your thesis forward as a research project. If there is, I'll be happy to donate some of my time and resources to investigate. I have to tell you, though, I'm feeling a little like Kevin O'Leary being pitched a crack-pot scheme on Dragon's Den.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Thanks for the interest. What I have is some arithmetic and tables. The numbers are good. However I have posted them here. I tell you what - I'll PM you one number, a simple illustration and if you think it has some merit you can PM me back. The arguing of the point may take some doing, more tables, but I'll send you my best illustration.

[Khar]

$1:

If you look at 282 0090 you will see that the net result over 20 years is the participation in the labour force is down by 4% or so while the unemployment is a high 9% or so. So the effective unemployment maybe 13%. Compared to cities in Alberta pre-recession or the 905 suburbs only in 1990 the figure is even higher. Plus there would be about 2% equivalent unemployment from involuntary part-time given the soft economy. The real unemployment is very high. Why would you let the government off for causing twenty years of recession level of unemployment in the engine of the Canadian economy? And the real question is how much damage have they done to the rest of the country? They certainly don't care. If they get caught, they'll pay for it in voters.

In downtown Toronto, in the skyscraper Banking towers are economists working for the 10 big banks of Canada. None of them know what the real unemployment figure outside the windows of their office is. The above is a little arithmetic to illustrate the point, from table 282 0090 which you downloaded.

If you do the arithmetic becareful to remember that the table figures are from a base of 100% of adults while the percentages, the unemployment, are from the base of the people in the labour force, the 68% and that. So you subtract but then divide by .68 or whatever. The participation minus the employment is divided by the participation, the 68%

The net result is that there are a million more people employed than when Toronto was at less than half the national unemployment average over 20 years. Why would you limit immigration to Toronto and limit that increase in productive power in Canada's economic engine if hundreds of thousands more people are working than there would be otherwise? Toronto would not have the power it has today, even if it's unemployment was hovering around zero, had Canada turned Toronto-bound immigrants away.

The end result is that while the labour force has gone down, there is no way that you can say this is not because of changing demographics, like age. Or other factors. Part of the reason I have provided those papers was for you to see the degree of ways people can be removed from the labour force, and why they might be removed from the labour force. One of the things I learned way back in first year university was the dynamics of hidden unemployment, and how the differences in participation rate do not necessarily capture those who want employment... nor does the unemployment rate capture all who are unemployed. I feel you have gone from criticizing one extreme, an unemployment rate which does not caputure some unemployment, to the opposite, a hidden unemployment rate which captures a higher amount of hidden unemployment than there is. I also still disagree with your method of limiting growth to accelerate a decrease in the unemployment rate.

Comparing a city which had unnaturally low unemployment during a bubble boom to how it is in a state where it is no longer the economic capital of Canada by leaps and bounds is going to bias your results. Wanting Toronto to go back to a time of a bubble is not feasible, in my mind. There has been a shift of power away from Toronto over the years, and it's going to have a deleterious effect on Toronto to some degree.

Unemployment in Toronto has flirted with the national average in the last decade, and only recently went above -- to flirt with the Ontario average unemployment. The unemployment rate has remained remarkably stagnant (with the recent recessions driving it into points and one bubble artificially dropping it to a low), even as the population of Toronto continued to grow at a rapid pace over these last twenty to thirty years. Toronto simply does not have the benefits for employment that a place like Alberta has right now. Low unemployment in an area experiencing record growth is going to be low, but that has brought us our own problems here, especially with services. It should be no surprise that a lot of people living here are Easterners who came from the better job prospects. If the gap widens, people come to fill that gap.

I simply disagree that immigrants should be turned away as a measure which would work. Provide incentives to go to other places in Canada, sure, some cities already fight for their fair share of immigrants. Improve education and accreditation methods. Don't stop immigration. It doesn't make sense to me. Toronto has hundreds of thousands of people working there than would have been working otherwise due to the growth that Toronto had because of them. In the good times, Toronto has benefitted from having them. In the bad times, Toronto demonstrated the ability to soak up the excess labour into it's force and create more jobs to sustain more people. These days, I think immigration will change on it's own to heading to areas where the chances are better, like Calgary or Edmonton.

I do not disagree with the decision of the Liberals to maintain immigration throughout the 1990s. This is my own personal view. I also do not disagree with the decision of the modern Conservatives to maintain the rate of immigration today. It's still my personal view. This is a cross government discussion -- we cannot blame or support any one government for anything in this regard. All governments have had a chance to change our immigration rate over this period, from Mulroney's majority (although he was out in 1993, before the worst hit), to Cretien's series of majority governments, to Martin's and Harper's set of minorities.

This discussion has begun to loop over the three threads it's been discussed, so I'm probably going to step out. Ironically, about a quarter of my posts have been on this topic and we're right back to the beginning again, it's kind of nostalgic. Best of luck playing with Lemmy. Tell him I'm still for that gay porn idea.

[Canadian_Mind]

What I fail to understand is why all the "immigrants are bad for employment" proponents don't realise that for every 250 000 immigrants we get per year, thats 250 000 new people who need additional service capacity provided to support them, more commodity goods and living goods, etc. A demand for services and goods to support those 250 000 people is what provides new jobs, and thus more opportunity for job, pop, and economic growth.

Now, a problem with this is that we don't manufacture a lot of our own shit anymore, so a lot of the new jobs are part time service jobs and basically jobs that revolve around getting the 90% of goods that are foreign made delivered to the immigrant consumer.

BUT, that isn't an immigration problem, that's an economic policy problem.

[Bruce_the_vii]

My, my. Khar says the 558,000 immigrants that came to Toronto before the creation of a net new job in the 1990s was a benefit. A benefit. I also ran the tapes on the 416 City of Toronto are family income at the time and found it was down 15%. The redistribution of jobs to the new people reduced average family income 15%, peak to trough. This is an immigration sur tax. He applaudes the Chretien Liberals for doing this. The social and economic order of Toronto took a torpedo midship and he applaudes it.

There's this idea around that immigrants stimulate the economy. They stimulate the economy, create jobs. So you import 250,000 immigrants and they create jobs. The Trudeau Royal Commission on the Economy chaired by former finance minister Donald McDonald said only there was a concensus amongst economists that immigrants do so. I wondered how this would work when there was unemployment, which was the point of the royal commission. I found the answer in the Fraser Institute book on immigration. The Fraser Institute economists argued that while a new immigrant that came in times of high unemployment might not find a job he could probably always find work. He might not find a job but he could find work. Is that economics? Apparently it was Donald McDonald's information.

Khar argues that of course Calgary is doing better than Toronto, the economic centre of Canada is shifting. In the 10 years to 2007 Calgary grew by 209k jobs while the Greater Toronto Area grew by 642k jobs. Toronto out grew Calgary 3 to 1. Toronto is still the centre of the economy, should be doing very well. It's just Khars wild opinion - somehow emotionally linked to the idea that Canada is an immigration country - which is plain old nationalism speaking.

[Canadian_Mind]

Bruce_the_vii Bruce_the_vii:

There's this idea around that immigrants stimulate the economy. They stimulate the economy, create jobs. So you import 250,000 immigrants and they create jobs. The Trudeau Royal Commission on the Economy chaired by former finance minister Donald McDonald said only there was a concensus amongst economists that immigrants do so. I wondered how this would work when there was unemployment, which was the point of the royal commission. I found the answer in the Fraser Institute book on immigration. The Fraser Institute economists argued that while a new immigrant that came in times of high unemployment might not find a job he could probably always find work. He might not find a job but he could find work. Is that economics? Apparently it was Donald McDonald's information.

Mix up with definitions? Might be referring to a profession or full time jobs as a "job" and part time jobs as "work."

[Bruce_the_vii]

It doesn't make sense what ever it is. It's interesting that Fraser Institute economists would indulge in such loose language.

[Bruce_the_vii]

ASLplease ASLplease:

I would have to agree with that economist. Going back for a second degree is definitely not unemployed. And, I shiver at the idea that my choice to leave engineering to become a doctor might trigger an immigration policy presumably reducing a demographic of non-engineers and non-doctors.

I would disagree. When there's a recession people head back to school. They're preference is to be working though. The gray area of hidden unemployment is all people busy doing other things. If you asked them in a telephone poll if the are unemployed they would say they are busy. However, in instances of good economies statistically they head back to the labour force. So I'm talking about what these individuals would vote with their feet for. And it's not a small thing. They will need the money, have debts and need to save for old age.

[Bruce_the_vii]

opps

[Bruce_the_vii]

You know one of the basis of politics is the family-income-is-tight. The mortgage, the kids and responsibility to old age have most people quite stressed. I'm talking unemployment, productivity, per capita income, good jobs and getting all these arguments here on CKA.