If a recession seems likely, consider how your investing and savings plans may be affected. Increases in the cost of living and borrowing, combined with the overall financial uncertainty over the impact of a potential recession, can be enough to cause personal and financial stress. There is no single best way to respond to such times.
The pandemic has accelerated a polarization of jobs that has become a structural trend in the Canadian economy. Previous Cardus research has shown that this polarization of the labour market between low- and high-skilled occupations, with a declining share of jobs available for mid-skilled workers, has led to an “hourglass economy.”
Yet, even while the share of the labour force employed in professional occupations rises, the working class retains the largest share of workers in the Canadian economy, making them an important political economy constituency. But who is the working class in Canada? This paper seeks to answer this question by proposing a modern taxonomy of the workforce and a picture of the working class that draws on a rich body of demographic, economic, and labour-market data.
A highlight of some of the findings reported in this briefing:
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how production occurs in the economy in two ways. One is the full or partial closure of non-essential activities such as travel, hospitality, arts and entertainment, personal services, airlines, etc. The other is the widespread shift from in-office work to working from home. This Insights article depicts labour productivity growth in Canada and its sources by industry during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to examine the implications these changes may have had on the productivity performance of the economy.
This report looks at how the dispossession of Indigenous lands nearly destroyed Indigenous economic livelihoods and discusses restitution from the perspective of stolen wealth.
This report costs poverty based on three broad measurable components: opportunity costs, remedial costs and intergenerational costs. The authors state that these costs could potentially be reallocated, and benefits could potentially be realized if all poverty were eliminated. The total cost of poverty in the Atlantic region ranges from $2 billion per year in Nova Scotia to $273 million in Prince Edward Island. It is close to a billion in Newfoundland and Labrador, $959 million, and $1.4 billion in New Brunswick. These costs represent a significant loss of economic growth of 4.76% of Nova Scotia’s GDP to 2.9% in Newfoundland and Labrador. The impact on Prince Edward Island’s GDP is 4.10%, and 3.71% in New Brunswick.
The purpose of this costing exercise is to illustrate the shared economic burden of poverty, and the urgency that exists for Atlantic Canadian governments to act to eradicate it.
This summary provides highlights on the work the Agency has and is undertaking using existing and new data sources to provide critical insights on the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 on Canadians. It covers the first year of the pandemic from March 2020 to March 2021.
This module provides a concise summary of selected Canadian economic events, as well as international and financial market developments by calendar month. All information presented here is obtained from publicly available news and information sources, and does not reflect any protected information provided to Statistics Canada by survey respondents. This is the issue for January 2021.
