WorkShoppers Online

We're No. 6 - not much of a cheer

Canadians tell pollsters that they are worried about a decline in our global influence and about our inability to address fundamental social and environmental issues.  Whereas once the federal government trumpeted our first-place ranking in the United Nation's human development survey, our current sixth-place spot is greeted with silence.  Full story here.

Visible minorities report low career satisfaction

A landmark national research study on visible minorities with long-term experience in the workplace paints a disturbing picture of dissatisfaction with their current careers and the perceived lack of recognition of foreign educational credentials in Canada.  The study by Catalyst Canada and the Diversity Institute in Management and Technology at Ryerson University examined the careers of visible minorities in corporate Canada and is based on the responses from more than 6,000 professionals, managers and executives in corporate Canada. Catalyst's executive director Deborah Gillis said there are two things that are important about this study.  Full article here.

Wage gap widening

Canada's rich are getting richer while the incomes of poor people continue to stagnate in a time when the wage gap should be shrinking, a new report on the Canadian economy said Thursday.  Inequality is continuing to grow year after year in spite of the current economic boom — a period of prosperity that would traditionally see the extremes between the wealthy and the poor drawing closer together, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said in the study.  Full article here.

An international study says inequality and homelessness are rising in Canada - despite a sustained economic boom and repeated federal promises to cut poverty.  Poverty is rising among children and new immigrants, the middle class is finding it increasingly difficult to afford education and housing, and there are 250,000 Canadians living on the streets, says the study by Social Watch, a coalition of 400 non-government organizations from 50 countries. Full article here.

Recent trends in output and employment

Several economic and statistical reasons explain why labour productivity did in fact slow last year, according to a new study.  The study examines reasons for one of the major economic developments in 2006 — the slowdown in growth of output, accompanied by steady gains in employment.  Typically, output exceeds employment growth by over 1%, reflecting the upward trend of productivity. The convergence of output and employment gains late in 2006 implied a slowdown in the growth of productivity. This study attempts to clarify why this happened.  Full article here.

Power Walls - Tobacco

If you've been in a drug or convenience store you have likely been greeted with a wall of tobacco products being displayed in a prominent area, usually at the cash register where all customers, including impressionable youth, attend before leaving the store. These retail displays are called 'power walls' because they're powerful marketing tools.  "Power walls are also the tobacco industry's last remaining way to advertise directly to current and potential consumers and one of the most powerful mediums for influencing youth into smoking cigarettes," says Jack Boomer, Director of the BC Clean Air Coalition. "Large displays of cigarettes behind counters at your local convenience or drug store serve as giant billboards attracting youth, enticing former smokers and encouraging impulse buying."  A Brown and Williamson study found that the store environment was the biggest source of advertising awareness of cigarette trademarks. In 2005, tobacco companies spent more than $100 million on retail point-of-purchase advertising, 25 per cent more than the $74 million they spent in 2001. "Because it works," says Veda Peters, Tobacco Education Coordinator for the BC Lung Association.  Vancouver Sun.

Health

A University College London study has found that you are more likely to perform well if you do not think too hard and instead trust your instincts. The research shows that, in some cases, instinctive snap decisions are more reliable than decisions taken using higher-level cognitive processes. Participants, who were asked to pick the odd one out on a screen covered in over 650 identical symbols, actually performed better when they were given no time at all to linger on the symbols and so were forced to rely entirely on their subconscious. Source.

500,000 new jobs by 2020

VICTORIA -- Canada's economy could generate a bonanza of $230-billion a year in increased trade and as many as 500,000 new jobs by 2020 if the country's governments unite to build up West Coast ports, promote Asian trade and foster cultural ties with the Asia Pacific, predicts a B.C. government study. Full story here.

Immigration not the solution

Canada would have to take in 2.6 million immigrants a year by 2020 and seven million by 2050 -- raising its population to 165.4 million -- if it wants to keep its ratio of retirees-to-workers at its current 20 per cent, according to a study from the C.D. Howe Institute.

Canada would be better off creating policies to increase the number of people in the work force, raising the retirement age, encouraging people to save and boosting productivity, the analysts said. Raising the retirement age to 70 over the next 20 years would keep the dependency ratio at about 20 per cent until around 2025, at which point it would rise gradually to stabilize at around 35 per cent by 2050.

Article.

Longer work week = HPB

A study confirms that longer work weeks are associated with high blood pressure. In a study of 24,305 employees, those who worked 40 hours a week had a 14-percent-higher risk of hypertension than those who worked less. The risk was 17 per cent higher in those who worked 41 to 50 hours and 29 per cent higher in people who worked even more. The study, in the October issue of the journal Hypertension, found that clerical and unskilled workers were most likely to have high blood pressure.  Source.

BC has largest share of working poor

More than 72,000 workers -- almost one in 10 -- live in poverty in Greater Vancouver, leaving the Lower Mainland with the greatest incidence of working poor of any major city in Canada, according to a federal government study.  Full article here.