Labour Market News

Labour Force Survey

The Daily
Statistics Canada
March 12, 2010

Employment in Ontario edged up by 10,000 in March, continuing the growth seen since May 2009 (+102,000). The unemployment rate declined 0.3 percentage points to 8.8% in March.

Toronto Economic Indicators
City of Toronto

The seasonally adjusted average unemployment rate for City of Toronto residents decreased from 9.9% to 9.7% in March.  At the same time, the monthly rate decreased to 9.4%, the lowest level in a year.  The labour force participation rate for City residents, which was falling sharply for several months, recovered a bit in March. The monthly employment rate increased in March, since the decrease in the unemployment rate was accompanied by an increase in the monthly labour force participation rate.

Toronto Leading Economic Rebound

National Post
Natalie Alcoba and Kenyon Wallece
April 8, 2010

Toronto is one of two Canadian cities leading a post-recession rebound, according to reports that paint a rosy picture for 2010 as Canada surges ahead of its G7 counterparts in economic growth.
The Conference Board of Canada's spring metropolitan outlook predicts Toronto's growth this year will be 3.7% helped in part by the city's regional manufacturing sector, which will post its first annual increase since 2005. The outlook also notes that the construction sector will benefit from a rebound in housing starts, especially in single-family units.

Immigrants

Facts Back Up Job-Search Frustration Felt By Newcomers

Toronto Star
Nicholas Keung
March 30, 2010

Immigrant professionals in Ontario are still finding it nearly impossible to crack through regulatory barriers and find jobs in the fields for which they were trained and for which they were accepted into Canada. One in ten immigrants has simply given up trying to get a professional licence, a groundbreaking study titled: Getting Your Professional Licence in Ontario: the Experiences of International and Canadian Applicants done by the province's Office of the Fairness Commissioner shows. Skilled immigrants earn less than half, on average, of what their Canadian-educated counterparts earn. Only one in four manages to obtain a licence in one of Ontario's 37 regulated professions, compared with 60 per cent of Canadian grads. And that licence may take two years to get, compared with less than a year for native-born Canadians.

Youth

Youth Joblessness Surging, OECD Warns

Globe and Mail
Tavia Grant
April 21, 2010

Youth joblessness has surged across the industrialized world, and is likely to stay high for the next two years, the OECD has warned. Young people were hit especially hard through the global economic crisis, with the jobless rate among OECD countries jumping to almost 19 per cent last year, from around 13 per cent before the recession. In Canada youth jobless levels are at 15.6 per cent, and actually increased last month.That’s troubling on a number of fronts. For disadvantaged youth who lack basic education, failing to find work can have long-term consequences on their careers - a term known as “scarring.” The agency recommends a number of programs to help youth, including bolstering apprenticeships, giving them income support while they continue their job search, boosting access to training programs and encouraging kids to stay in school longer.

Women

Construction Sector Council Hosts Symposium To Discuss Lack Of Women In Trades

Journal of Commerce
Richard Gilbert
April 21, 2010

The Canadian construction industry held a symposium to examine the barriers women face when entering the workforce and to develop a strategy to overcome these barriers based on best practice. The Canadian construction industry is taking steps to expand the domestic labour pool by improving access to industry careers for older workers, Aboriginal peoples, immigrants and women. According to a report produced by the CSC, which also focused on the state of women in construction, the numbers of women in the construction industry and the rate of their participation has not grown significantly over time. Although the absolute number of women registering in trades apprenticeship has gone up, the proportion of women in all trades groups is much smaller.

Education

Knowledge Infrastructure Projects Underway: Grand Opening Celebration At Humber College

Canada News Wire
April23, 2010

Humber College has received federal and provincial funding totalling $35 million for projects at its Lakeshore Campus through the Knowledge Infrastructure Program and Ontario's 2009 Budget. This government investment to revitalize Humber College is part of "Open Ontario Plan" to create jobs, support the local economy and students.The Government of Ontario, in its 2009 budget - Confronting the Challenge: Building Ontario's Economic Future, is committed to investing in infrastructure and has designated $780 million to colleges and universities to modernize facilities and boost long-term research and skills training capacity over the next two years.

Rescuing High School Dropouts

Hundreds of students drop out of Toronto’s public and Catholic schools every year. In fact, this city’s 76% graduation rate lags well behind the 85% provincial target set by Ontario’s education ministry. The Toronto District School Board has committed to meet that target by the end of the 2010/2011 school year. Since 2003, the provincial government has dedicated $1.5 billion to target dropout rates across the province. Education officials stress that Toronto clearly faces greater challenges than most school boards, ranging from poverty to language barriers and funding shortfalls. The consequences of high dropout rates are severe. Many students who quit school find themselves in low-paying dead-end jobs and sometimes it takes that shocking realization to send them back to school.

Other News

In The New Economy, Knowledge Is King

Metro Toronto
Rafael Brusilow
April 21, 2010

In the new economy, old jobs require new skills and new jobs outnumber traditional ones so educational institutions need new teaching approaches to prepare students. Michael Cooke, vice president of academic and advancement at George Brown College, says the increasingly knowledge-based economy means schools have to teach a much wider set of skills to students regardless of field. Companies are leveraging employees’ skills in ways that would have been surprising 10 years ago, Cooke says. Skills from a relatively new field like game design, for example, can be applied to things as varied as bank machines and online ticketing while technology has facilitated the creation of entirely new career paths like health informatics, which deals with the creation and management of computer-driven health records and databases.

Building A Strong Partnership With The Not-for-profit Sector

Government of Ontario  
April 22, 2010

Ontario is working with the not-for-profit sector to better support organizations that help Ontarians maintain a high quality of life.  The province will develop a comprehensive and long term strategic action plan for its partnership with the not-for-profit sector. This initiative will be a first-of-a-kind approach for Ontario and will lead to recommendations to support the not-for-profit sector. In collaboration with the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the government will conduct a series of discussions with the not-for profit, private and public sectors on how to make government more responsive to not-for-profit and volunteer organizations. This will help inform new ways to strengthen the sector, as part of the province's five-year Open Ontario plan.

VOLUME 3

Self-employment In The Downturn

Statistics Canada
Sébastien LaRochelle-Côté
March 29, 2010

For the most part, this article focuses on changes in self-employment levels between October 2008 and October
2009. Self-employment tends to increase during
recessions and the recent economic downturn has been no exception. Between October 2008 and October 2009, self-employment rose by 3.9% in Canada in seasonally adjusted figures, while paid employment fell by 1.6% in the public sector
and by 4.1% in the private sector. This represents an increase of more than 100,000 self-employed individuals over the
period, while the number of paid workers decreased
by almost half a million.

Study: Projections Of The Diversisty Of The Canadian Population

Satistics Canada
March 9. 2010

2006 to 2031
All growth scenarios considered, the diversity of Canada's population will continue to increase significantly during the next two decades, especially within certain census metropolitan areas, according to new projections of the country's ethnocultural makeup. By 2031, between 25% and 28% of the population could be foreign-born. This would surpass the proportion of 22% observed between 1911 and 1931, the highest during the twentieth century. About 55% of this population would be born in Asia.

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