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EI reform will drive down wages for everyone: CLC chief Georgetti

The president of the Canadian Labour Congress says Canada's job market remains fragile and this is no time for the federal government to make it more difficult for unemployed Canadians to receive Employment Insurance benefits.

Ken Georgetti was commenting on the release by Statistics Canada of its Labour Force Survey for April 2012. The economy added 44,000 full-time jobs in April, the national unemployment rate was 7.3 per cent and there were 1,370,000 unemployed Canadians in April.

"We have seen some increase in the number of jobs but we have to put this into perspective," Georgetti says. "The percentage of people who are employed in Canada is still lower today (61.9 per cent) than in May 2008 (63.8 per cent). This indicates a fragile labour market. If our employment rate today were what it was prior to the recession in 2008, we would have an additional 530,000 jobs in the Canadian economy."

Despite the fragile job market, Georgetti says, the government wants to make it harder for unemployed Canadians to gain access to Employment Insurance benefits. Ottawa has folded a number of important Employment Insurance related measures into its giant budget bill. "The government has not allowed adequate time for debate," Georgetti says. "We want them to pull those EI measures out of that bill so that they can be looked at carefully and debated separately."

CLC Senior Economist Angella MacEwen offered this analysis of the current job picture:

"Overall, the Canadian economy added 44,000 full-time jobs in April, mostly in goods producing industries (construction, manufacturing & natural resources). April's job growth was driven entirely by the private sector, with jobs added in Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. Employment in Ontario remained unchanged, but the unemployment rate rose from 7.4 per cent to 7.8 per cent as more people joined the search for work. In the public sector, there were 19,000 jobs lost between March and April. There will be more to come as we begin to feel the impact of the austerity budgets introduced by the federal and several provincial governments.

"The unemployment rate for youth aged 15 to 24 remains high at 13.9 per cent, compared to 10.9 per cent at the start of the recession in August 2008.  The real unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers and those waiting for a job to start, is even higher at 20.4 per cent of youth aged 15 to 24. There were 17,000 fewer youth employed in Canada in April 2012 than there were a year earlier."

A version of this article first appeared in The BC Federationist, publication of the BC Federation of Labour.

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