Transcript slide 10 of 22

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OTTAWA HIGH TECH UNEMPLOYMENT
ONGOING SINCE 2001 “TECH BUST”
WHY?
WHAT HAS BEEN CAUSING THIS?
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NOBODY really knew what was going on.
And NOBODY thought about THIS:-
In a December 2003 interview, City of Ottawa Mayor Bob
Chiarelli quoted figure of 20,000 jobs lost but 15,000 new jobs
created – an impression of some “recovery”.
He got it wrong – but the problem was not Mayor Bob Chiarelli’s
fault. NOBODY was in a position to give him correct information.
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NOBODY thought about THIS, EITHER. WHY NOT? WHAT IS THE EXCUSE? -
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ANOTHER WAY TO SHOW THE MAIN FINDINGS OF THE 1998
“OTTAWA’S HIDDEN WORKFORCE” REPORT:-
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JANUARY 2006.
Given out to the media: LEFT hand chart. Nice green park land - polluted
with a “little” doggy doo, or some such, but nothing unusual
THE TRUTH: RIGHT HAND chart. More like a garbage pit / cesspit.
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In additon, based on March 2006 StatsCan report, “under-employment”
problem actually
several times bigger than suggested by 1998 “Ottawa’s Hidden Workforce”
report
Reference URL as at Apr 01 2006:http://www.ottawasun.com/News/National/2006/03/30/1511627-sun.html
March 30, 2006
9-to-5 not working for most
Abnormal hours hard on health
By SHERYL UBELACKER, CP
Qote: “In fact, a five-year survey by Statistics Canada suggests that only
one in three Canadians aged 25 to 54 have jobs that fall into the
category of "standard" full-time work.
For all the rest -- those who were underemployed, overworked or
fluctuated from one extreme to the other -- having abnormal on-thejob hours led to many singing the blues about high stress and poor
health.
"We found that just one-third of workers are between 1,750 and 2,400
hours every year in all of the five years," said co-author Sebastien
Larochelle-Cote. "This means you're working between 34 and 46 hours a
week, 52 weeks a year.
"That is the standard, the normal full-time, full-year -- the thing
that everybody thinks that everybody does," he said yesterday. "But
that's not necessarily the case."
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Older workers more secure, but harder to re-employ
Long-term unemployment down from early '90s high, Statistics Canada says
Eric Beauchesne
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Older workers are less likely to be laid off than younger workers but once they are, they tend to remain unemployed
longer, a new study of long-term unemployment has found.
The proportion of jobless suffering long-term unemployment (defined as those out of work a year or more), at 9.7 per cent
last year, is down sharply from the peak of 17.3 per cent during the early 1990s recession, Statistics Canada said in the
study released yesterday.
But long-term unemployment remains at nearly 40 per cent more than in 1990 and 120 per higher than in the late 1970s,
it says. And the proportion of long-term unemployed older workers, aged 45 and over, was still 17 per cent last year.
Among the Group of Seven major industrial countries, long-term unemployment is higher in Canada than in the U.S.,
Britain and Japan but lower than in Italy, Germany and France.
The report says the number might understate the actual level of long-term unemployment among older workers because,
after a year or more of being out of work, some may give up looking for jobs and drop out of the labour force
© The Ottawa Citizen 2004
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So, according to Statistics Canada, “some may give up looking for jobs and drop out of the
And what is THAT supposed to mean? They
might become defeatists and “drop-outs”, and suddenly “not
WANT” to work, might they? And what do YOU understand
by the term “drop-out”?
labour force ”.
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Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE — No. 302
ISSN: 1205-9153
ISBN: 978-0-662-46327-6
Life After the High-tech Downturn: Permanent Layoffs and
Earnings Losses of Displaced Workers
by Marc Frenette
11F0019 No. 302
ISSN: 1205-9153
ISBN: 978-0-662-46327-6
Statistics Canada
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
24-I, R.H. Coats Building, 100 Tunney’s Pasture Driveway, Ottawa K1A 0T6
How to obtain more information:
National inquiries line: 1-800-263-1136
E-Mail inquiries: [email protected]
July 2007
Quote from page 9:“The sample consists of workers aged 25 to 49 in the year prior to a potential permanent layoff (year t − 1). Older workers are
excluded, since they may contemplate retirement following a permanent layoff. Younger workers are excluded, since they may
simply return to school if they lose their jobs. …..”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------COMMENTS:
1. What if the people aged 49 upwards DON’T WANT or CAN’T AFFORD to “RETIRE”? And what is the sense
in such a speculative and inappropriate statement, in light of the known problems connected with
demographics and “retirement” of the “baby boomers”? Is there some implicit age–based discrimination
going on here?
2. With respect to people aged under 25, what about those – new graduates, for instance, at all levels - who
are being fobbed off by employers based on so-called “lack of experience”?
We have to have proper ANALYSIS backed up by SURVEYS here, not speculation based on emotion or
tradition.
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However, from page 8 of this “Life After High Tech…”report:“The data requirements for the study are quite substantial. First, one needs to be able to identify high-tech
workers. Second, one needs to be able to identify workers who have been permanently laid off. Third, the
sample of laid-off high-tech workers must be large enough for analysis. Fourth, the data need to be
longitudinal in order to follow laid-off workers. Fifth, the data must have information on earnings of workers, as
well as a sufficient amount of worker and firm characteristics. Given that the high-tech sector makes up less
than 10% of the Canadian economy, and that information on the reasons for separation is rarely available in
large data sources, it should come as no surprise that virtually all Canadian data sources containing the
appropriate information are much too small for the required level of detail.”
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-This is conclusive evidence of “sets” and Venn diagrams being paid attention to, which was
always a requirement for a proper analysis.
Mr. Chisholm pointed out quite clearly this requirement for proper attention to the basic principles of counting,
in an e-mail he circulated on November 28th 2006 to his federal M.P. The Hon. John Baird, among others;
Service Canada had just decided to dis-continue funding O.T.I. - based on completely wrong analyses of the
problem, founded solely on the usual employment numbers coming from Statistics Canada and O.C.R.I.. Mr.
Chisholm received a letter of thanks for pointing this out, among other things, dated June 1 st 2007, from The
Hon. John Baird.
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Problems for high tech job seekers:• Inappropriate / dysfunctional rules and regulations at both federal government and provincial government level,
which in practice serve to exclude most of the people affected from any government-funded re-training. Current
rules do not focus on making taxpayers out of people who want to work.
• Bad image foisted on the people affected based on mis-classification / mis-designation as “drop-outs”, or some
such, based on some reports from StatsCan and other sources.
• “Hidden” discrimination by employers, based on age.
• Exaggerated / inappropriate mandatory requirements for positions that do become available
• Refusal by most employers to even consider any on-the job training or co-ops of any kind, as part of the
solution to resolving skill sets gaps
• Far too few jobs relative to numbers seeking them. A major reason: general lack of awareness of the numbers of
jobs required, caused by incomplete information and wrong analysis / gross under-statement thereof “at
source” – i.e.StatsCan and OCRI
• Planned closure of OTI on December 31st 2007 based on incorrect assumption(s)
that the problem is “temporary”
• Incorrect MTCU view of O.T.I. as a social aid agency – when, in fact, O.T.I. is concerned with making taxpayers
out of people who want to work
• In November 2007, certain M.T.C.U. officials have suggested that solving the above problems and continuing to
fund O.T.I. amounts to “baby-sitting”, or some such. This is both inappropriate and libellous.
• Inappropriate and incorrect equating of high tech jobs to hamburger-flipping jobs,
or high tech workers to hamburger-flippers. What about relative tax revenue
production? See next slide.
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So you THINK a former high tech worker with a job as a hamburger flipper or
security guard has a proper job, DO YOU?
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And has anybody at M.T.C.U. been considering THIS? It emphasises the importance
of the high tech sector as a driver for the whole local economy. It also refers to the
1998 “Ottawa’s Hidden Workforce” report.
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Extracts from “MATHEMATICS OF JOB HUNTING, RE-TRAINING AND TAX REVENUE PRODUCTION”
From the Summary:“A probability and statistics-based approach to finding the probable time needed to get a job is demonstrated. This is based on an
individual’s records of the number of employers approached, the time required prior to getting previous jobs and the confidence level
considered satisfactory. Two ways to project the time required for job hunting activities in bad market conditions, relative to an
individual’s previous experience, are shown.
An attempt is made to guage the implications of unequal success probabilities for individuals in different situations, within a group of 800
applicants for one job. In the example considered, someone in a top sub-group of 50 applicants who are working might require 13 weeks
to get a job, while even the best unemployed people might require 2 ½ years. The estimates depend, among other things, on the numbers in
the sub-groupings used to classify the 800 people and the success probability assigned to each sub-group; the sum of the success
probabilities for all the sub-groups must equal 1. The estimates ignore waiting times for employers to respond and waiting times for
decisions on contract awards by employers’s clients. In some cases these factors are dominant.”
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2.7. Probability Groups in a Job Applicant Population.
Suppose there are 800 applicants for a job. It does not follow that the probability of success is the same for everybody, for obvious
reasons. It is instructive to try to break down the 800 applicants into most-favoured sub-groups and least favoured sub-groups, for
instance as follows:-
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APPENDIX 3
Ratios reported of job seekers to positions open – examples
300 to 800 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OttawaHiTech/message/329 From Paul Swinwood, President of SHRC, April 2003
Up to 5,000 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OttawaHiTech/message/663 Federal government
1000 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OttawaHiTech/message/794 Federal government (DND)
1000 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OttawaHiTech/message/797 Ditto – example involved 1000 applicants, of whom 265 selected to write
exam, of whom 75 interviewed, of whom 25 put on eligibility list for between 4 and 15 positions depending on funding (note: 15 minus 4
equals 11 possible “pink elephant” situations for some unlucky persons involved)
***N/s http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OttawaHiTech/message/2754 ***Refer to Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) letter to
the P.M. (The Right Honourable Paul Martin), dated March 18th 2004 – effects of immigration policy. See in particular their remarks
concerning the years 2001 and 2002.
500+ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OttawaHiTech/message/3774 Local (Ottawa) engineering co: 500 applicants in one week quoted by the
co.’s HR dept.
1,470 [email protected] Local (Ottawa) agency helping immigrants. - e-mail to author Monday, May 09, 2005 3:28 PM
111 (approx.) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OttawaHiTech/message/5459 Bangalore, India – 1 million applicants for 9,000 jobs
How long would it take YOU to find a job? How would YOU optimize the trend in your bank balance under such conditions?
Do you KNOW what you are doing when you CRITICIZE people out of work for not managing their affairs properly? You are
CRITICIZING them for NOT SOLVING an UN-SOLVABLE MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM.
The same mathematical laws that ensure continuation of difficulties for most job seekers can also make things seem easy to people who have
consistently been favoured with job offers from within their own little workplace-related social and professional groups.
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Probability of landing a job within “n” applications if the probability of any one application being successful is 1/N
It can be shown that this is given by:PS = 1- {(N-1)/N}n
- equation (2),
where PS = probability of success
Alternatively, if we are interested in the number of job applications for a given success probability,
n = log(1- PS) / log{(N-1)/N} - equation (2a)
There is another way to approach the problem, based on a job hunter’s own personal statistics
concerning numbers of applications sent out prior to landing previous jobs and the time spent
on the different activities involved. However in the interests of brevity it will not be detailed here.
This will serve to warn some people, especially in government, that the overall problem is not
as simple as it might appear.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“BEST CASE”:EXAMPLE
Someone already working, always competing against 4 other “top” people for a better job, where there is a 50% chance of one of the
5 “top” people getting it.
From equation (2) this person will have a 65% chance of being successful after applying for 10 such jobs. If he / she wants to know
the number of job applications to make in order to have a 95% chance of success, equation (2a) would indicate a need for 28.63
which means 29 in practice.
Based on an average of 3 hours per application (research, doing the application, interview etc.) this means 30 hours of work or 87
hours of work on job applications, respectively.
Probably enough to be annoying; on the other hand no particular worry for someone who is already working anyway.
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“WORST CASE”: EXAMPLE
Someone out of work for a long time, no gainful employment at all, always competing against 459 other people in similar situations
for a better job, where there is a 5% chance of one of this group of people getting the job.
From equation (2) this person will have a 63.2% chance of being successful after applying for 9200 such jobs. Based on an average of
3 hours per application (research, doing the application, interview etc.) this means 27,600 hours of work ( 690 weeks at 40 hours per
week and 13.8 years based on 50 weeks per year) on job applications, respectively, WITH ZERO INCOME FROM GAINFUL
EMPLOYMENT DURING THAT TIME FRAME.
If he / she wants to know the number of job applications to make in order to have a 95% chance of success, equation (2a) would
indicate a need for 277,756 job applications under the same conditions, about 40 years spent doing job applications AND ZERO
INCOME FROM GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT DURING THAT TIME FRAME.
This is ABSURD. The situation giving rise to this is both ABSURD
and UN-RECOGNIZED by most people
People already in passably comfortable jobs will not, of course, know or care about any of this AND WON’T BE
THINKING ABOUT THE ASSOCIATED LOSSES TO THE TAX BASE, EITHER.
What’s more – among other things - the above analysis leaves out the effects of the “pink elephant” problem of
projects failing to materialize for employers
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Solutions:• Any notion that O.T.I. is just a “social aid agency” must be dismissed. It is concerned with
making taxpayers out of people who want to work.
• Everybody must admit to the true size and character of the problem, as the first step
towards solution.
• Re-vamped system for analyzing and reporting on unemployment and under-employment
problem in Ottawa and Canada
• Educate employers, voters and certain government departments. General change of
entrenched and mis-informed attitudes is necessary.
• Satisfactory rules and regulations concerning access to re-training. Such rules MUST
NOT deny access based on someone not being an “insured participant” or not “officially”
unemployed / “Not in the Labour Force”. Rules must focus exclusively on making
taxpayers out of EVERYBODY who wants to work.
• Consider some funding for O.T.I. based on comparison with $650 million Next Generation
Jobs Fund. Reference :http://www.ontariocanada.com/ontcan/page.do?page=6059
• Policies at all levels must be geared to stimulating the economy to produce enough jobs /
optimize the performance of the economy based on optimized utilization of all available
factors of production labour.
• For a complete and lasting solution to the problems, work in some areas that lie outside
the mandate of Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities will be necessary.
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So dealing with this and getting Ottawa’s high tech workers back to
work is “BABY-SITTING”, is it?
And why did everybody ignore Mr. Chisholm’s public warnings as
far back as April 18, 2002, about the potential size of the problem?
And there are witnesses. And it’s documented.
So we can continue to ignore it, can we?
We did NOT have to wait until July 20th 2007 for anybody in
government to even substantially recognize the problem at all,
when (a) everybody should have considered the implications of the
“Ottawa’s Hidden Workforce” report of Fall 1998, from the
beginning, (b) Mr. Chisholm gave due warning about it in an April
18th 2002 public forum, and (c) Mr. Chisholm gave further public
warnings about it through the “Kanata Kourier Standard” and the
“Ottawa Business Journal” in early / mid-2006. The problems in
Ottawa’s high tech sector have been ongoing since 2001.
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Kanata Kourier Standard – July 20, 2007
Mixed messages leave high-tech unemployed in the lurch
NEVIL HUNT KOURIER-STANDARD
The province has quietly moved to shut down the Ottawa Talent Initiative - the Kanata-based high-tech retraining and job-help
centre - without announcing the decision publicly.
The decision to stop funding of the non-profit Ottawa Talent Initiative as of Oct. 31 was shared with high tech workers at a
standing-room only meeting at the YMCA's Kanata job centre on Tuesday (July 17). The bearer of the bad news was a manager
with the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU).
But the following day, MTCU Minister Chris Bentley told the Kourier-Standard that no funding decision has been made.
More than 50 people tried to cram into an office with just 30 chairs to hear MTUC manager Patrick Donnelly explain what
employment services would be available to them after the Ottawa Talent Initiative loses its funding.
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And WHO, in between Patrick Donnelly and the Minister, caused this
screw-up?
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...and don’t tell US that “...nothing can be done because of the legislation...” – or
some such.
All that’s doing is to tell us to be defeatists. And it’s un-professional.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
1.
“Behind the Numbers”. Authors: James Bagnall, Andrew Mayeda.“The Ottawa Citizen”, July 13 2006.
2.
“Ottawa’s Hidden Workforce”. Ottawa Economic Development Corporation (O.E.D.C.), 1998. (Notes (1): O.E.D.C. has since
been absorbed by O.C.R.I., (2): It concerns the Ottawa C.M.A. as opposed to the Ottawa-Gatineau C.M.A.
3.
Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (O.C.R.I.) – high tech employment numbers surveys in June and December each
year.
4.
Statistics Canada – monthly high tech employment numbers in Ottawa-Gatineau C.M.A.
5.
“Work and Labour in Canada: Critical Issues”. Author: Andrew Jackson – Chief Economist, Canadian Labour Congress.
Publisher: Canadian Scholastic Press, May 2005
6.
“9 to 5 Not Working for Most”. Author: Sheryl Ubelacker, CP. “The Ottawa Sun”, March 30, 2006
7.
“Work Hours Instability in Canada”. Authors: Andrew Heisz, Sébastien LaRochelle-Côté. Statistics Canada, Business and
Labour Market Analysis Division, March 2006.
8.
“Life After the High-tech Downturn: Permanent Layoffs and Earnings Losses of Displaced Workers”. Statistics
Canada, July 20, 2007
9.
“Choosing a Future: a New Economic Vision for Ottawa”. ICF Consulting: report to the City of Ottawa, Fall 2000.
10.
“Mathematics of Job Hunting, Re-Training and Tax Revenue Production.” Author: Robert T Chisholm, June 15, 2000.
11.
“Harper calls Canada a nation of defeatists, defends remark about Easterners” Author: Louis Elliott. Canadian Press.
“National Post”, May 30 2006.
END OF SHOW
- and if certain people – “big” managers, and such-like - didn’t like it, too bad – for THEM. Time to “get cracking” and deal
with this properly. YOU expect US to “get cracking”, now it’s YOUR turn. It takes two to tango.