Thread by @ArmineYalnizyan

First, I want to say how impressed I am with the work @StatCan_eng has been doing to keep us informed, and help us get *better* informed with regard to policy relevant data.
Today's LFS report was a masterpiece of clarity.
www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quoti…
1/n

Second, this report says, near the bottom, about 1/5th of all Canadian households are having difficulty meeting basic household financial needs (rent or mortgage payments, utilities, groceries), and it's been about 1 in 5 since April. That's 2.5 MILLION households! YIPES
2/n

# of households in 2019 from here
www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-402-…

Third: as in the US, white Canadians (i.e. those not identified as "visible minority" or aboriginal) have been least affected by Covid19 job/pay impacts to date.
Most impacted (using an experimental methodology, kudos @StatCan_eng): South Asian and Chinese Canadians.
3/n

In the US it's Black and Hispanic Americans that have been hardest hit. Check @eliselgould's timeline later today for an update on this chart.
3a/n

The surprise story (for me) is that the biggest scale of "dropping out" due to Covid job impacts (no longer in the labour force, i.e. not employed, and not looking for work) was among Filipino/as.

4/n

Great feature in today's @StatCan_eng LFS report described concentration of different "races"/ethnic groups (what's the right term for what they are doing, because "visible minority" isn't the right rubric) by industry sector
Hard to sum up. Read here
www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quoti…
5/n

As @eliselgould noted earlier, Black Americans' unemployment rate is still rising. In today's #cdnecon LFS, the groups seeing continuing increase in unemployment are South Asian, Arab and Black. All around 17% unemployment, while overall it's 11.3% (seasonally adjusted)
6/n

Sneaky detail in the unemployment rate: usually it's among the labour force aged 15 years of age and over.
Now people aged 15-69.
This is a good development, I think?
7/n

Actually the limitation of the age is restricted to the question about "race" (the "population group" to which people describe themselves as belonging)

so, my bad, it's not a new LFS metric.
8/n

Re the she-cession and she-covery dynamics; same and same.
Women harder hit in every group, whether accounting for race or not.
Women not recovering jobs/hours of paid work as fast as men.
And that leads to the last point of my summary.
9/n

One of the best features of @StatCan_eng's COVID19 era LFS reports is showing the evolution of "labour utilization".
This summarizes the number of people unemployed, out of work but not looking for work, and people working less than half their usual hours due to COVID-19.
10/n

It's so informative; and the human equivalent of the @bankofcanada's output gap measure, which talks about capacity utilization (re: physical plant).
[We should have measured this a long time ago, and should adapt it post-COVID, because of population aging labour pressures.]
11/n

At its peak (comparing April to February) we lost over a third (36.1%) of potential labour (people who lost jobs and hours of work due to COVID-19).
Now it's under a quarter (22.4%), 22.9% among women, 22% among men.
12/n

More women aren't getting back in because more women were kicked out of jobs in marginal businesses (barely making a profit). And now -with higher costs and lower volumes of business - many of these business won't survive, even if they reopen.
13/n

This makes my earlier tweet pointing here critical to watch for #cdnecon.

https://twitter.com/ArmineYalnizyan/status/1291701162039808002

Just because people return to work now doesn't mean it's all a process of recovery, slow or not.
There may be relapses of rising unemployment.
14/n

Nowhere is this more critical than in one sector of the economy: childcare services.
This week we learned over 50% of licensed childcare centres may not reopen in Ontario, and among the ones that do, let's hope none operate at the same capacity they did before.
15/n

Since women are half the employed workforce, and since childcare is essentially infrastructure for the whole economy, and since childcare may see fewer reopenings, and some that reopen but cannot survive with higher costs and lower revenues....we may see rising unemployment
16/n

Unemployment could RISE, not fall, in coming months for women who
1) were unemployed, have a job offer, but can't take it because of lack of available childcare.
2) were employed, working from home, but can't continue because of lack of childcare/safe school reopening.
17/n

From today's LFS report: "As in June, employment in July was furthest away from pre-shutdown levels among mothers whose youngest child was aged 6 to 17."

This could get worse, not better.

Why should we care?
18/n

1. Women were half the employed workforce preCovid19
2. Everyone wants to get over Covid19 impact asap
3. There is no mathematical way to "recover" GDP without jobs/employment level recovery (restore household income to restore household spending, the #1 driver of GDP).
19/n

<yes, I'm going there>
There is no recovery without she-covery.
There is no she-covery without childcare.

In fact, expect a deeper, more prolonged she-cession/recession without childcare.
Let's not do this to ourselves.

Will closely watch Sept 4 @StatCan_eng LFS report.

~fin