Inside the labour market downturn - ARCHIVED

The Canadian labour market recently experienced its most significant downturn since the 1990 - 1992 recession. Although employment rebounded more quickly than during the downturns of the early 1980s and early 1990s, the number of individuals without a job remains significantly higher than at the beginning of the downturn. This article investigates how various categories of non-workers grew in the past two years. It also discusses alternative measures of unemployment that include some of these categories in the calculations. Several of the alternative measures also include part-time workers who would prefer to work full time.