When it comes to labour issues of the past several decades, policymakers have tended to focus on unemployment issues. Thanks to the post-war baby boom leading to surging population numbers, there had predominantly been an excess supply of people looking for work in the 20th and early 21st century.
But the process of demographic aging and declining birth rates has now flipped this focus on its head. The Hub’s editor-at-large Sean Speer explores this new dynamic with Yahoo Finance Canada’s Alicja Siekierska on the Crisis Management podcast.
“I’m not sure we have gotten our collective heads around this new reality. Every time that we seem to be focusing the policy discussion around this long-term secular trend, something emerges that restores unemployment as a matter of concern. Think of the 2008-09 financial crisis, or the experience of the pandemic. But the truth is these temporary experiences don’t change the underlying reality: for the foreseeable future, the primary labour market, and I would argue economic, issue facing our country is the fact that we have too few workers.”
And while this is an issue we need to seriously address given the adverse effects it has on economic growth, this should, he continues, create conditions that are good for workers overall. Wages and salaries should be on the rise.
Specifically, this could provide a much needed boost for young Canadian workers who have come of age during the global financial crisis and the pandemic.
This could also lead to employers offering more intangible benefits as they compete for workers in the form of creative supports, flexibility, and loyalty.
Additionally, Speer expects there to be a renewed investment in labour-replacing automation technologies as workers become more scarce.
