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I think unemployment rates are something we should all be aware of. This PDF is government research that shows the average unemployment rates in Canada and in each province from 1976-2013. Note that in most provinces in the 1900s, the unemployment rate increased dramatically. This is clearly shown in the highest increase of 20.1% in Newfoundland and Labrador in 1993. It is also interesting to see how provinces like Saskatchewan were not hit with unemployment nearly as bad. Why do you think that is?

This site shows current unemployment data in Canada for 2014. Unemployment remained unchanged at 7% in August and July of this year and has averaged 7.74% since 1966.

While the unemployment rate may 'only' be at 7%, a more informed look at the statistics would reveal real Canadian struggle. 7% may seem low, but this stat does not include 'discouraged workers' in Canada (those who have given up on finding work and are no longer looking). And while the employment rate may appear to be at an all-time high, look closer and you find that most of those workers do NOT have full-time work, and the stats have climbed only because of the increase of women in paid roles in the last decades.

I am particularly interested in working with at risk youth. It has been identified that youth unemployment and underemployment is in fact rising and is, amazingly, higher than during the recession! This article talks about medium and large companies getting on board to help young people gain skills during high school and/or post-secondary in order to add practical experience to their resume, along with their debt-inducing education. It will be interesting to see what happens over the coming years.

The arguments, perspectives and content in this article are very much supportive to understand what Friedman elaborates in his book The World is Flat. Because of new technoogies, the developing countries and Asian countries like China and India are emerging as dominant world economies. "By relocating some parts of international supply chains, globalization has been affecting the price of goods, job patterns, and wages almost everywhere."

The Canadian economy shed 11,000 jobs in August but the unemployment rate stayed the same at seven per cent, Statistics Canada reported Friday. The figure was much less than economists were expecting. The consensus was that the economy would eke out a slight gain of about 10,000 jobs.

Maclean's article describing some pitfalls of American capitalism and how the Canadian more socialized system differs (and how it makes for fewer inequalities and a stronger nation). Published at macleans.ca, but written from an American perspective, and covering everything from unemployment to quality of life to a brief introduction into why the States fear the word "socialism".

This website provides quarterly updates on Ontario's Labour Market Information. It covers topics including: job gain/loss percentages, unemployment rates. It also breaks job information down by Industry covering employments rates, good produced, and various related services. This resource is beneficial as it covers regional trends within Ontario and provides you with graphs and charts so that the data is presented in an easier to understand manner. It also provides the sources of the data and the links to the source documents if available allowing for more in-depth research to be done on a particular number presented.

Salman Sakir's article is relevant to the issues raised in Friedman's book The World is Flat in which Friedman in a sense laments over the impact of globalization upon the developed countries, the USA for him, because the developing countries like Brazil and Asian countries like China and India have a massive work labour influence upon the West. Sakir focuses on both the positive and negative aspects of globalization, one of the five forces in Gratton's The Shift and a form of global economy as discussed by Stanford in his Economics for Everyone. Because of low wage and easy availability of experts/labour in the developing countries, foreign investments have been attracted by those Asian and developing countries where the jobs have been created for the locals. On the other hand, the citizens of the developed counters of the West and the North America have consumed the products from the developing countries in a reasonably lower price. Poverty ratio has been decreased in the developing countries which have also been integrated by the phenomenon of globalization. These are positive impacts. But in the developed countries, manufacturing industries have been moved out. so unemployment rate is ever increasing, Sakir highlights these aspects of globalization in this article.

This article explores how some employers are experimenting with new ways to hire, train and invest in young people, even if they have no experience, for highly-skilled, specialized positions. I think this is an interesting new trend, considering that many youth are facing unemployment or are underemployed because of employers looking for experience.

This is an article written by the CBC (April 2013) reporting the common practice of outsourcing jobs to foreign workers by Canadian banks. It points the finger particularly at RBC and its close relationship to iGate, a foreign IT company, which receives 11% of its revenue from RBC. Canadian Bank outsourcing is kept very private, therefore it is difficult to identify how many Canadian jobs have actually been lost. In 2012, at least 45 Canadian jobs at RBC were lost, and at CIBC, at least 41. This has resulted in fewer full-time positions and the banks have offered very little support for lay-offs.

The Labour Market Information ( LMI) Service helps Canadians find information about occupations and labour market trends and outlooks, including skill or labour shortages and surpluses, and statistics on unemployment rates and the working-age population.