A THREAD with some thoughts on today's 🇨🇦 Labour Force report. The headline growth in jobs (almost 1 million) was very encouraging, much better than expected. By that measure, we've climbed almost halfway back out of the hole we fell into Feb-April. #cdnecon @CntrFutureWork ..2
But the next steps of job recovery will be much harder to achieve. The share of unemployed expecting to go back to their former jobs is way down (just 1/3 now). And I expect a wave of 2nd-order layoffs as companies permanently downsize because their market isn't coming back..3
Recent examples of that include Bombardier and VIA Rail. The official unemployment rate (12.7%) is still just the tip of the iceberg. Counting people nominally employed but not working, and those who've given up looking, a more realistic measure of unemployment is 21-22%. ..4
That's a lot better than April (when a realistic unemployment rate was more like 35%), but it's still a historic crisis, and will require sustained rebuilding leadership from govt for years to come. ..5
I've argued the recovery might look like this. (One Twitter follower called this a #LochNessMonsterRecovery 😊): a quick partial rebound as direct health restrictions ease, followed by long 'bouncing along' as more traditional demand-side impacts of a downturn are experienced ..6 
I think we're getting close to the limit of the automatic job recovery we can expect from simple relaxation of health restrictions. And as we see in the US, Victoria in Australia, & elsewhere, this monster will snap back to life when it sees any opening. So hard work is ahead ..7
This was a busy week in #cdnecon, with this LFS report coming on heels of Wed's Fiscal Snapshot. Most thought the Snapshot was 'bad news' (cuz of its ginormous deficit forecast). But in fact it is the flip side of the coin of today's good jobs numbers. The two are related: ..8
Without the enormous injections of govt support (for household incomes, to keep workers on payrolls, to fight the health battle against #COVID19) that caused that big deficit, today's job numbers would have been much more dire. ..9
Today's report also highlighted again the brutally unfair concentration of this recession on the backs of those who can least afford it. Job losses since Feb among workers earning under $16/hr (bottom fifth of the labour market) have been almost 7 times worse than for others ..10
Women, young workers, workers in temporary and insecure jobs (including gig workers), immigrants and migrant workers, have all also experienced disproportionate harm from the crisis. See our recent report on 'Work After COVID' for more stats on this: centreforfuturework.ca/2020/06/03/ten…
In sum, today's report is encouraging. But it confirms we are still locked in a historic, brutally disequalizing economic and labour market crisis. It can be fixed. But we need continued ambitious (and expensive) leadership from govt to keep on repairing the damage. END
