Times are tough for Quebec workers: 25,000 full-time workers got handed their walking papers in March, which amounts to over 1,000 axes falling per working day here.StatsCan reported that 8,300 new jobs were created during the same period, so the net loss was a still-nasty 16,800 jobs in a single month.
About 80 percent of the 25,000 jobs lost were in manufacturing and exporting. The province has been losing 10,000 jobs a month in that sector this year alone because the world won't buy the stuff we can make.
So unemployment ticked up from 7.4% to 7.7% percent, meanwhile Ontario's rate stayed the same and they lost one-third fewer jobs during that same time with a much-larger economy.
Attempts to explain Quebec's disastrous job situation result in a series of biased interpretations.
-The PQ government doesn't care much about employment or the economy because they're obsessed with independence and language, and as a result, jobs get lost every time they get in power.
- Manufacturing is simply not viable here because we overpay our highly-unionized workers.
-Companies are hoarding cash and opting not to spend it on workers.
- Canada, as a petroleum exporting nation, has seen its population fall victim to the situation common on many petroleum-exporting companies, which is that the population gets lazy and the culture of financing start-ups and inventing new businesses stagnates.
-We don't need workers to make things anymore, we need them to make websites better, and this is just part of the switch over to that reality.
Manufacturing jobs are largely outside of the city of Montreal, so the regions probably suffered more than the city. But to those of us who recall the painful 1990s in Quebec, the current situation feels like an alarming return to a dark era we had hoped was behind us forever.
One of the biggest reasons for Canadian job losses is because of the exchange rate between the Canadian and US dollar. A few years ago there were 1000s of small Canadian businesses exporting products to the US largely based on the lower Canadian dollar.
ReplyDeleteI really don't agree with KG on overpaid union workers. 10 bucks an hour equals about 20 grand in income annually. 20 bucks an hour equals about 40 grand a year in income, not exactly a fortune.
Germany has one of the better European economies and they have all kinds of unions.
The biggest threat to Canadian's welfare is international corporatism..... what the Royal bank is trying to do by exporting Canadian jobs even though they have been averaging about 7 billion in annual profits.
Wasted taxpayer's dollars and Canadian lives in Afghanistan, fighter jets that are nowhere to be seen but keep increasing in cost, increased tax breaks for the wealthy and already profitable corporations, wealthy Canadians hiding their money and avoiding Canadian taxes in overseas accounts, a totally useless thing called the senate that we pay for.
It is getting harder and harder to be proud of this great country.
Trickle down has never worked!
That's my rant for today.
Repatriate, repatriate, repatriate. Bring back the jobs. ALL the jobs.
ReplyDeleteUntil the 70s, everything your bought was made here. Then Hong Kong. Then Japan. Then China.
Repatriate, repatriate, repatriate. Three words to solve the problem.
Sounds Nice in theory - but it will Never Work in the Real World . . Once the Genie is Out of the bottle , you Won't get him Back In !!
DeleteConsumer goods would be incredibly expensive if we did that.
ReplyDelete"Consumer goods would be incredibly expensive if we did that."
ReplyDeleteOnly because the dollar has been consistently devalued over the last 40 years due to international free trade.
Scrap all the free trade agreements and slap massive 500% + tarrifs on anything imported.
"Manufacturing is simply not viable here because we overpay our highly-unionized workers."
ReplyDeleteBingo
@Marc - What do you think a "designed in QC / made in QC" laptop would cost? I'm thinking five figures and a waiting list to get one because of the constant strikes.
No matter what the governement is, unemployment in Québec is (generally) systematically higher than in Ontario or in Canada, for that matter. 9 years of hyperfederalist liberal government in Québec has not changed that, despite the slight blip around the financial crisis (because the financial "industry" is not based here, eh!).
ReplyDeleteAnybody with a brain can see that, obviously, the problem does not lie with the Parti-Québécois, but with Canada itself, whose economic policies have to cater to Ontario and, to a lesser extent, the west.
Making the goods back here will not come back, unless there is a catastrophic economic collapse that makes it uneconomical to rely on asian near-slave labour and ship goods from the other side of the planet here.
As of overpaying workers, they have to be overpaid. Because the transit system here sucks so bad and the suburbs are sprawled so far, people are forced to have cars in order to live “normal” lives. As soon as it is understood how relying on cars for transportation is an economic dead-end and the main reason why western economies are so uncompetitive relative to third-world countries, watch our economic competitiveness soar once again once we finally realize that automobiles are not for the proletariat and that public transit must be improved, and the city densified much more.
"Manufacturing is simply not viable here because we overpay our highly-unionized workers."
ReplyDeleteBut they're customers. The main thing dragging down our economy (not just Quebec, I live in Toronto) is the shrinking of disposable income. A large population of minimum-wage or low-wage workers will never grow an economy.
Every business has the same problem - not enough customers. Is there anywhere in the world with lots of people with disposable income but no investment or innovation?
" What do you think a "designed in QC / made in QC" laptop would cost? I'm thinking five figures and a waiting list to get one because of the constant strikes."
ReplyDeleteI call total BS on that.
" A large population of minimum-wage or low-wage workers will never grow an economy"
There you go. All the jobs available these days are minimum wage-moron McJobs.