Oh, you thought Canada’s labour market was good?! Sorry.

In today’s The Big Story podcast, for a solid couple of years, as the economy recovered from the pandemic, the narrative when discussing labour in this country was that the market was “tight” or there was a “labour shortage.” Unemployment approached record lows, and companies were scrambling to hire and keep talent.

Some of that was true. But not everywhere, and it wasn’t the whole story. And also, however tight the labour market was, it isn’t anymore. Beyond the top-line unemployment number, there were always signs that workers weren’t actually benefitting all that much from how in-demand they were. 

Adam D.K. King is an assistant professor in the labour studies program at the University of Manitoba. He wrote a piece on unemployment in The Maple. “It’s probably worse news than we are recognizing because [the unemployment rate is] not counting all these other people that are negatively affected. Another thing to keep in mind too is that anytime you see unemployment officially rise, there are segments of the labor force that suffer first and worst. Those tend to be racialized workers, those tend to be new immigrants, new Canadians,” said King.

You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google and Spotify. You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.