Farmland conversion and landfill sites

[danbrotherston]

I often wonder what the real unemployment rate might be. To my knowledge, we don’t count individuals who have exhausted their unemployment and don’t find work. Are they just considered employed at that point. I fell into that category a number of years ago and never found employment again and just ended up taking early CPP and considering myself retired.

Individuals not looking for work are eventually not considered part of the workforce. To an extent, it's a reasonable decision from a statistical point of view as it's very difficult to determine why an individual is not looking for work.

You can address this gap somewhat by looking at the labour force participation rates, but those also include retired people, so then you need to consider the age groups as well. And our population is aging so the overall labour force participation rate is dropping.

Some good discussion on labour markets and employment here:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-qu...0b-eng.htm

That's some weird population data...but the more interesting is the increase in labour participation for older people. That's not a good thing, but it is also in line with the narrative that I hear (admittedly largely from the US) of older people having to work in order to deal with our economic failures. I mean, no doubt, US capitalists would like to go back to the old days where they just work people to death...but the rest of us do not want that.