North America, Europe and a handful of other nations are expected to return to pre-2008 recession employment rates by the end of 2017, according to a new Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report.
The average employment levels of the 35 countries that make up the OECD are projected to hit 2007 levels exactly 10 years later, with Canada not far behind the group’s average.
In 2016's first quarter, Canada’s employment rate was only 2% lower then the pre-recession rate. Although Canada’s May 2016 unemployment rate was still up almost a percentage point up from its 2007 counterpart, it was down 1.8% from its recession high of 8.7% during the summer of 2009.
Following the crash, Canada experienced a strong recovery with wages growing at a faster rate then the OECD average. However, wage growth was slower in the seven years following the recovery than in the seven years preceding it.
Although Canada has experienced a strong employment growth since 2008, a fall in commodity prices has slowed the recovery. After dropping between 2010 and 2014, the unemployment rate in energy-producing provinces began to rise as commodity prices fell. This increased the national unemployment rate slightly. However, it is projected to gradually decrease over 2017.
Canada’s long-term employment rate of 11%, determined by the number of unemployed people who have been looking for a job for over a year, is one of the lowest among OECD countries. However, that is significantly higher than its pre-recession rate of 7%.
According the OECD report, “vulnerable youth should remain a policy priority” for Canada. Of Canadians aged 15 to 29, 15% are neither employed nor in education or training (NEET). This is two percentage points below the OECD average but one percentage point above Canada’s pre-recession levels. Many people who are neither employed nor receiving education or training live in a household without any employed adults, which, the report suggests, puts them at risk of poverty.
“Reducing the NEET rate remains a key challenge for policy makers, given that young people who are NEET are at risk of becoming socially excluded, poor and without the skills to improve their situation,” the report says.
Overall, in most of the statistics highlighted in the report from education to unemployment, Canada performs better than the average of OECD countries. The only area Canada isn’t leading is in the number of people employed in areas “with high-performance work practices,” which Canada is tied with other OECD members.
