Yes, Stats Canada asks the interesting question, “Is it possible to have the rate of folks employed stay the same, but the rate of unemployed folks increase?”, the answer this month is “Yes”. How? Read the article to get that explained to you.
For me there was some good news:
Employment continued to grow in professional, scientific and technical services in June (+37,000). From a year ago, employment in the industry has grown by 7.5%, an increase of 86,000 workers. The biggest contributors to this year-over-year increase have been computer design services and legal services.
Which makes an old hacker like me feel a little better these days. Unemployment now sits at 6.2% up 0.1 over last month’s figures.
The one really interesting point made was the following:
Since June 2007, average hourly wages have risen by 4.4% to $21.15. This rate of growth is double that of the most recent increase in the Consumer Price Index (+2.2%).
Wages are out stripping CPI? So how are the employers going to deal with this? Increasing prices? This is how things started in the 70’s if I remember correctly. Stay tuned, but it should be interesting to see what big Union contracts come up and what settlements come of that as well.
Have a great weekend folks.
