“We Need All Hands on Deck in this Labour Market”
Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford appeared on CBC’s News Network, with host Natasha Fatah, to discuss new employment data confirming a rapid slowdown in Canada’s labour market.
He argued that a perverse consequence of aggressive interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada has been a reduction in labour force participation: down 0.7 points since the tightening began in March, equivalent to the loss of 225,000 workers.
“We need all hands on deck in this labour market”, he said, to address supply chain problems, the health care crisis, and other challenges. In this context, “throwing cold water over the whole economy” has a perverse, self-defeating impact on the supply issues that are contributing to inflation in the first place.
He argued for a more flexible and targeted anti-inflation strategy, including limits on excess prices and profits in concentrated industries (like supermarkets, energy, and housing), and investments to address logistics bottlenecks and inadequate infrastructure.
Please follow this link to see the full feature interview.
Jim Stanford
Jim Stanford is Economist and Director of the Centre for Future Work. He divides his time between Sydney, Australia and Vancouver, Canada. Jim is one of Canada’s best-known economic commentators. He served for over 20 years as Economist and Director of Policy with Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector trade union.