maplesaga‘Empty pit of despair’: Job seeker describes struggle as Canada posts biggest job loss in decades
Ottawa to allow rural employers to increase proportion of temporary foreign workers | CBC News
Ottawa will allow rural employers to have a greater proportion of low-wage temporary foreign workers on their payroll on a time-limited basis, as part of new measures the federal government announced on Friday.
I do think immigration is the main cause of the unemployment crisis, mass immigration while the Bank of Canada raised interest rates was always going to cause mass unemployment.
During Covid they did stimulus and QE, which caused the 8% inflation. If you see the Phillips curve you’ll see that causes a labor shortage in the short term. This is a natural part of an economy, and wipes out the wealth inequality caused by asset appreciation via bargaining power for wages, if you rememeber the “quiet quitting” phenomenon a few years back.
The Federal government then did mass immigration, 1.4 million a year, tripling immigration over 3 years. They also allowed students to work 40 hours. This decreased labor pressure and lowered wage growth.
The Bank of Canada then raised interest rates to cool the job market. Now we have cooled wages, less need for workers, and an inevitable surplus of workers. All this was also done when we had a preexisting housing shortage, so rents and housing prices dramatically increased as well.
This doesn’t seem like a logical argument for today. Maybe a few years ago.
Unemployment is either a too many workers or too few jobs issue.
Of course both can happen at the same time and that is to a degree what’s happening here.
The most significant shock to the Canadian economy in the past year is the trade war with the United States. This would be the primary reason in 2025 and 2026.
The immigration from years ago exacerbates the issue but Carney’s government has scaled back significantly in the past year.
Youth unemployment is up to 14.1% because cost of living has caused people to delay retirement and automation tends to snap up entry level jobs first.
I would look at this information and blame the US foreign policy first. Then maybe Trudeau for poor planning though doubt he could have anticipated the Canada US relationship to sour.
Well we had a large demand for workers when inflation was high, because there was a lot of new money supply created via cheap borrowing and QE. That money floods the economy and leads to shortages in labor. It also leads to rising asset prices as things are bid up, housing and gold are a good example.
But as we raise interest rates employment falls, as money supply is sucked from the economy. Now the employment shortage has reverted to the mean.
The people we brought in were less educated, as per the Trudeau himself, hence its not creating new industries or exports. Which is what countries typically due, attracting high skilled immigrants that efficiently increase exports and productivity, and lead to higher per capita standards of living. Which we had the reverse of this, as per capita GDP fell and Caroline rogers is ringing the alarm bells on productivity:
I’m not sure why you’re looking at Canada in isolation when the tariffs introduced by Trump have been the biggest shock to the Canadian economy in the past year. It seems that you really want to attrubute this to immigration / temporary foreign workers and, while that is a factor, I think Canada having its bestie (who gobbled up 70% of its exports) stab it in the back is a more logical explanation for why unemployment has risen.
Per capita GDP has been falling for a decade. We had the second to last per capita GDP in the 38 countries of the OECD the last decade. Its been a problem long before tariffs.
Mass immigration into a housing shortage benefits who? Definitely not renters or non-asset holders, so what kind of regressive policy is it?
100% of your problems could have been solved if we had max cap networth and 100% taxes above that cap.
Ya maybe, only because it was drastically raise inflation and interest rates, which would make mortgages far more expensive.
Yeah you are right, forgot about price ceiling part. Gov should be regulating lots of things compared to the situation now. Though infinite wealth cap is the main solution. It is like joining an online game 1 lvl where many players are 1000000+ lvl. The system itself is unfair and we need 100 lvl max
Does the wealth effect you in any way, if Bill Gates has 800b dollars does that hurt you, is that money being taken from somebody else when the money supply grows at 8% because Bill Gates and other rich people dont spend any of it?
Yes? Redistribution, creating more jobs, social programs, positive effect on mental health. Inflation on what? Lets say meat becomes super expensive. Shop wont be able to extract all this wealth if progressive taxes eats it up then again distribute that and create med facilities, spend that on rnd, education. List goes on.
How do you think that would effect the economy. Assuming you liquidated Elon Musks Tesla stock it clearly will devalue Tesla stock, and deflate bubbles far faster than consumer staple. Why would anyone then invest in AI, or Tesla, or anything risky that generates additional profit?
Well it just would be done elsewhere I think, and you’d be stuck doing low skilled labor as a society.