As a lecture, financial planner and an educator, Tim Pazuik has an interestingly optimistic perspective on Canada’s unemployment rate. With constant battering on the slow recovery from the 2008 economic recession, Pazuik sees that a 7.2% unemployment is a positive sign considering that employment never fell below 7% in the 1990’s.
By comparing Canadian economy a few decades ago, the working population in 1976 was about 41.6% of the current population, while today’s workforce is about 50%. At first glance it may not seem much; however, take into count the population boom in Canada over the past 30 years, an 8.4% based off of population is rather impressive. Overall he believes that Canada is still the “Land of Opportunity”.
What is on my mind: Editor’s response
With the calculation of unemployment being the simple division of (unemployed labor / labor force population) the numbers do not always tell the whole story. The current concern I have is the percent of structural unemployment, mismatched workers who are over qualified and under appreciated for their current job, in Canada.
As a university student who studies hard to earn their degree, most people can tell you that a university degree has depreciated in value. As our population gets larger and larger, more people with universities degrees are stuck in underutilized jobs. With minimum wage and business moving south of the border, Pazuik’s perspective on Canada is better named as the “Land of Limited Opportunity”.