{"id":83111,"date":"2014-11-01T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-01T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resourcework2.devstudio.work\/?p=83111"},"modified":"2024-11-16T16:21:06","modified_gmt":"2024-11-16T16:21:06","slug":"better-info-needed-to-clear-up-temporary-foreign-worker-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resourcework2.devstudio.work\/?p=83111","title":{"rendered":"Canada lacks the data to make informed decisions on temporary foreign workers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After a decision to no longer count job postings from free online classifieds, the federal government dropped its estimate of job vacancies in Canada. The new figure is a vacancy rate of 1.5 percent, down from the four percent cited in the 2014 budget in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It throws yet more confusion into ongoing debates about Canada\u2019s temporary-foreign-worker program, as discussed in today\u2019s Globe and Mail.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why – one might ask – do we need temporary foreign workers if we have so few vacant jobs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it\u2019s not quite so simple. A big problem is that the new estimate isn\u2019t very reliable either. We simply don\u2019t know enough about how many job vacancies we’re facing and where. And in order to design a good temporary-foreign-worker program, we need that info.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the conclusion of the C.D. Howe report released in April.<\/a> Author Dominique Gross, an economist and professor of public policy at Simon Fraser University, writes that \u201cThe federal government has not collected precise information about vacancies for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gross argues that temporary-foreign-worker programs can be good for the economy when they help fill short-term labour demand quickly, but not if they discourage employers from hiring domestic workers in the long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it makes sense to bring in temporary foreign workers to, say, help build a big resource project in a community suffering from a skills shortage. But no one should be using the program to replace the regular workforce in a communities with high unemployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting the right outcome requires careful tweaking, which involves knowing a lot more than we do now about job vacancies. Gross argues that adding a question or two in one of Statistics Canada\u2019s regular economic surveys would give policy makers a lot more to work with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Severinson is the Research Director at Resource Works Society. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The federal government has not collected precise information about job vacancies\u00a0for decades, according to a report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":86417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,250,447,205],"class_list":["post-83111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economy","tag-employment","tag-foreign-worker","tag-jobs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCanada lacks the data to make informed decisions on temporary foreign workers -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/resourcework2.devstudio.work\/better-info-needed-to-clear-up-temporary-foreign-worker-confusion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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