Canada Adding Better Paying Jobs

Last week, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper won himself a majority government in a federal election that saw a record number of seats change parties in the House of Commons. Many Canadians believe that the election results were Harper’s reward for assisting the nation out of the recession by having it rebound better than nearly every other country in the world.

With the national economy continuing to improve and more jobs becoming available, it appears as if there is only more good news on the horizon. At least, this seems to be the case according to an article published by The Toronto Star on the Moneyville section of their website. It reports that the Canadian economy is creating more jobs, and apparently they are better paying.

According to CIBC’s employment quality index, 60 per cent of new jobs created over the past year can be considered “high-paying, quality jobs”. The study also found that there has been a rise in the number of full-time and paid positions compared to self-employment in the last twelve months.

This is in contrast to the fact that at the end of the recession nearly two years ago, new jobs fell mainly in the part-time and lower-paying categories. In the past year, many job openings have come from high-paying sectors such as manufacturing, finance, construction and public service.

Canada can be credited for having a uniquely strong economy that seems to be growing at a rate unmatched by other developed countries. The United States, for example, continues to struggle with growing its economy and opening up good, well-paying job positions to its many citizens that were greatly impacted by the recession.

Said economist Benjamin Tal: “This (quality) measure is roughly back to the pre-recession levels. This is a much better performance than a similar measure in the U.S., where the quality of employment index continues to soften despite some improvement in the pace of job creation.”

As the Moneyville article points out, the United States is still “about six million jobs shy of its pre-crisis levels”. Canada, on the other hand, has added over a half million new jobs since July 2009. This number, in fact, is about 80,000 jobs greater than the number of position lost during the recession.