Labour Economics: write a discussion of the articles about the course materials we have covered.
lizening
Laboureeconomic.docxThe assignment:
One of the course goals is to have you apply the concepts we learn in class to current events and to be able to discuss these events from an informed and critical perspective. To assist with this goal we will have an online discussion board where students will post about two news articles each and reply to two classmates’ posts. Of course, please feel free to respond to more than two of your classmates’ posts.
The instructions for this exercise are as follows:
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I ask that each student follow the news and take note of articles that are related to our course material
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If an article is of particular interest to you, please start a discussion on Course Spaces with the following information:
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– subject: “title of newspaper article” – body: 1) 2-3 sentences describing the article; 2) 2-3 sentences explaining how it
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relates to what we are learning in labour economics; 3) 2-3 sentences of personal reflection
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Please follow the discussion board regularly and respond to 2 of your classmates’ posts
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The ground rules for this exercise are:
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Please be courteous to your classmates, i.e. if you disagree with their comments, do so in a way that is respectful
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The articles you choose to discuss must have been posted in the week you choose to discuss them (i.e., if you post an article on September 17th, 2019, it cannot be from March, 2018)
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One of the articles must be posted before the second midterm (i.e., prior to October 31st)
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When you are responding to a classmate’s discussion, you must do so within 1 week of their original post or within 1 week of the last comment below their original post.
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Example discussion: *Note that this example is from January 2019; however, your discussions should be in relation to current news articles. Also, your articles should be related to the material we are learning that week. We will be covering the material in this post during the week of September 9th-13th.*
The article can be found here.
This article, published in the Calgary Herald, presents some labour market statistics for the city of Calgary for 2018. The article suggests that, although 8,000 jobs were created, the number of individuals not in the labour force grew by 24,000. The overall takeaway from these statistics is somewhat difficult to interpret since without further information it isn't clear whether changes in labour force participation are due to demographic changes or to an increase in the number of discouraged workers.
As we will learn in class, this is a direct example of how labour market statistics, like the unemployment rate, don't necessarily paint a complete picture of the condition of the labour market. In this example, it would appear that Calgary's labour market is strong, given that the number of jobs increased, but at the same time, an even larger number of individual's exited the labour force. Without further analysis, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the state of the labour market.
Two points that I think would be helpful for interpreting these labour market statistics are: 1) As Trevor Tombe points out, since labour force participation may have declined as a result of demographic shifts, it would have been helpful if the article followed up on this by showing some figures on the total number of people in each age group (not just the number of people in the labour force within each age group); 2) It would have been useful to have some more comparison to what was happening in the rest of Canada during the same time. The article mentions the unemployment rate in the rest of Canada, but not how it has been changing over the same time period. It's difficult to think about factors that may be affecting labour market conditions in Alberta without knowing whether their trends are different from those in the rest of the country.
