{"id":11567,"date":"2011-10-11T09:17:57","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T13:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11567"},"modified":"2011-10-11T10:21:36","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T14:21:36","slug":"stephen-gordon-there-is-no-case-for-canada-to-do-something-about-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/10\/11\/stephen-gordon-there-is-no-case-for-canada-to-do-something-about-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Gordon: There is no case for Canada to &#8220;do something&#8221; about jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the side-effects of living right next door to the US is that Canadians often have more information about the state of the economy in the US than they do about their own economy. Calls for the federal government to &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/report-on-business\/economy\/economy-lab\/stephen-gordon\/cry-to-do-something-about-jobs-not-based-on-evidence\/article2197054\/\" target=\"_blank\">do something<\/a>&#8221; about jobs is a good example:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>But it doesn\u2019t make much sense for Canada to \u2018do something\u2019 about job creation because of problems in the U.S. labour market. Why would anyone look at U.S. data and go on to infer that the rate of job creation in Canada requires a policy response? <\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>The best proxy I\u2019ve been able to find for the hiring rate is the number of workers who have been at their current jobs for less than three months. Movements in the number of people hired should show up here, albeit with a certain lag. As far as I can make out [. . .] the hiring rate fell significantly in 2009, but returned to trend in 2010. The data from 2011 are consistent with those of the boom years of 2005-2007.<\/p>\n<p>Calling for the government to \u2018do something\u2019 about job creation when hiring rates are already at pre-recession levels is puzzling. At best, it is a demand that the government undertake busy work: activities that achieve little beyond demonstrating that it is \u2018doing something\u2019. And judging from the response, it is also a demand that the government is happy to meet. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the side-effects of living right next door to the US is that Canadians often have more information about the state of the economy in the US than they do about their own economy. Calls for the federal government to &#8220;do something&#8221; about jobs is a good example: But it doesn\u2019t make much sense [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,84],"tags":[95],"class_list":["post-11567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-government","tag-jobs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-30z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11568,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11567\/revisions\/11568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}