Job Tenure, Worker Mobility and the Youth
Labour Market during the 1990's
by Garnett Picot, Andrew Heisz and Alice
Nakumura
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
Analytical Studies
Branch research paper series, No. 155
This study examines prominent and
emerging labour market trends of the 1990s to see if they have reversed under
the pressure of the robust economic growth of 1997-1999. Specifically, it looks
at the dramatic rise in self-employment, trends in job stability, and the low
youth employment rate over the 1990s. Self-employment is seen to continue to increase
rapidly through to the end of 1999, in spite of the more rapid growth in paid
employment over to 1997-99 period. This finding is consistent with earlier work
that showed that the growth in self-employment over the 1980s and 1990s was independent
of the level of economic growth; self-employment expanded equally in recessions
and expansions. This suggests that the rise in self-employment of the 1990s was
not primarily driven by slack labour demand forcing workers to create their own
jobs (i.e. workers being pushed into self-employment).
Job stability rose
through much of the 1990s, pushed up by a low quit rate associated with low hiring.
The best data currently available show that quit rates in particular have remained
relatively low (given the position in the business cycle), and job tenure has
remained high. There is little evidence indicating that among paid workers, job
stability has deteriorated in the 1990s.
While employment rose and unemployment
fell significantly for most age and gender groups during the rapid recovery years
of 1997-99, often registering better levels than observed at the last cyclical
peak of 1989, the youth employment rate (15-24) remained low. We find that lagging
youth employment rates were due in large part to an increased propensity for young
persons to remain in school full-time. This factor has been placing significant
downward pressure on the youth employment rate for the past 20 years. The propensity
for the young to be full-time students changed little over the 1997-1999, and
as a result youth employment rates remained low by historical standards.
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