The demand for skilled trade persons in Canada is very strong and new apprenticeship registrations increased by threefold between 1991 and 2007. The number of apprenticeship completions however, did not increase and as a result average completion rates have dropped over the same period. A CLSRN...

We provide evidence on the potential for reforms in labour law to reverse deunionization trends by relating an index of the favorability to unions of Canadian provincial labour relations statutes to changes in provincial union density rates between 1981 and 2012. The results suggest that...

Du fait de l’entrée importante des femmes sur le marché du travail rémunéré au cours des quarante dernières années, ainsi que du besoin croissant d’un deuxième salaire pour élever une famille, les parents et les employeurs ont de plus en plus demandé aux gouvernements de financer...

There are two competing views on how immigration would affect local labor markets. When immigrants offer skills similar to those of native-born workers, they may compete directly with them, and this competition may lead to lower economic returns for native-born workers. This view can be called...

This paper uses the Canadian Labour Force Survey to understand why the level and dispersion of wages have evolved differently across provinces from 1997 to 2013. The starker interprovincial differences are the much faster increase in the level of wages and decline in wage dispersion in...

Using Statistics Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), this paper presents the first evidence on whether increased disability benefits reduce the negative consequences of parental disability on children’s well-being. Using a continuous...

This study uses data from the Statistics Canada Longitudinal Databank (the LAD) to address three general questions: (1) How great is the average drop in the level of total income after retirement? (2) What is the composition of income in retirement, and how does it change? and (3) What impact do...

This paper shows that changes in the skill requirements of jobs are one way by which economic downturns affect job match quality. In doing so this paper makes two contributions to the literature. The first contribution is to document a stylized fact about the cyclicality of skill requirements...

We study the relationship between age and literacy skills in Canada, Norway and the U.S. – countries that represent a wide range of literacy outcomes -- using data from the 1994 and 2003 International Adult Literacy Surveys. In cross-sectional data there is a weak negative partial...

Between 1970 and 2005, the share of total earnings in the Canadian labour market going to middle-class workers has fallen significantly, while the earnings share of higher-earnings workers has risen. Is the middle-class being hollowed out? A paper by CLSRN affiliate Charles Beach (Queen’s...