The performance
of the 1990s Canadian labour market
by Garnett Picot and Andrew Heisz
Business
and Labour Market Analysis Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper
series, No. 148
There is a general sense that the 1990s labour market was
unique. It has been characterized by notions such as "downsizing", "technological
revolution", "the knowledge-based economy", "rising job instability",
and so on. This article provides an extensive overview of the performance of the
1990s labour market, and asks just how different it was from the 1980s. It goes
on to ask if the facts are consistent with many common beliefs and explanations
and focuses on (a) macro-level labour market outcomes, and (b) distributional
outcomes.
Macro-level topics include:
- Has the nature of work
changed dramatically in the 1990s?
- Has there been a continued ratcheting
up of unemployment?
- Have we witnessed rising job instability and increased
levels of layoffs?
- Did company downsizing increase in the 1990s?
- Why
did per capita income growth stall in the 1990s?
- For a worker with a given
level of human capital, has there been a deterioration in labour market outcomes?
Much of the focus in the labour market over the 1980s and 1990s was
on distributional outcomes... who is winning and who is losing. Some of the
distributional outcomes of the 1990s labour market include:
- Outcomes
for men and women.
- Changes in the relative wages of the highly educated
and earnings inequality.
- Trends in the rate of low-income.
- The
changing outcomes for recent labour market entrants, including young people and
immigrants.
- The extent to which technological change plays a major role
in these outcomes.
The article concludes with a discussion of the
overall performance of the 1990s labour market as compared to the 1980s.
This study was also published in two consecutive issues of Canadian Economic Observer,
Catalogue No. 11-010-XPB, January and February, 2000 as:
"The labour
market in the 1990s."
A complete version of the paper is forthcoming
in Canadian Public Policy.
View
the full publication.
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