 How Much of Canada's Unemployment is Structural?Lars Osberg and Zhengxi Lin Canadian Public Policy, 2000, vol. 26, issue s1, 141-157 Abstract: This paper starts from the definition that "structural unemployment occurs when workers are unable to fill available jobs because they lack the skills, do not live where jobs are available, or are unwilling to work at the wage rate offered in the market." This implies that the number of vacancies in the Canadian labour market is an upper bound to the extent of "structural unemployment." The paper summarizes available estimates of the vacancy rate in Canada. In the high technology sector, vacancies may be equivalent to 2.2 percent of the labour force but evidence from more respresentative surveys indicates a range of 0.45 to 0.75 percent for the economy as a whole. Although during the 1980s the outward shift in the relationship between the Help-Wanted Index and the unemployment rate raised concerns that structural unemployment was an increasing problem in Canada, that shift has been reversed in the 1990s. Date: 2000 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpp:issued:v:26:y:2000:i:s1:p:141-157 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Canadian Public Policy is currently edited by Prof. Mike Veall More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8. |
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