Quote of the Day: “Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It’s purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.” Thomas Sowell
A half page today on the Insight (Huh?) Page by Donalee McIntyre from the just terrible Community Editorial Board to tell us about her friend who is a farmer where her “work and journey are connected to the histories and futures of Black people globally who contribute to the agricultural sector”. Seriously – a half page on the Insight (Huh?) Page for this.
And because of McIntyre’s CEB nonsense today, a rather serious article on COVID-19 and what this has done to women in the workplace was shoved off to the last page in Section A. Bailey Greenspon and Nia Brown, in an op-ed they talk about a “she-cession”, (cute), and how it’s disproportionately effect on women in Canada. But, as always with op-eds, data and statistics are cherry-picked to prove a point. They claim that “according to the Canadian Women’s Foundation… women accounted for 63 percent of the one million jobs lost as of March 2020.” Now, I’m not sure why the authors would repeat a stat from this organization when they can simply go (and cite) a StatsCan report on this very topic. If you go to StatsCan here: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action table 14-10-0287-03 gives you a very nice customizable page that you can use to grab monthly unemployment and participation rates by province and sex. Comparing February 2020 and February 2021, we get an entirely different picture than what the authors are trying to paint. Here is a table I pulled from the site that shows exactly the employment numbers. Notice that in February 2020, the unemployment rate for women was 5.4% while the men’s rate was 5.9% – something they forgot to mention. Now, notice that the percentage of full time employment for men and women are also different. Full time men’s jobs dropped by 2.6 percent between the two periods while women’s full time employment rate only dropped by 1.6 percent. Another glaring stat that they forgot to publish. Of course, the huge difference is the drop in part time employment – women’s rate is down a whopping 10.3 while men’s rate in (only!) -7.4 percent. So, out of the 630,000 jobs that were lost, almost 40 percent that were lost are part time – again, something that the authors forgot to tell us. Gee, I wonder why???
| SEX | TYPE | FEB20 | FEB21 | DIFF | % |
| M+F | Total | 19,130.3 | 18,531.2 | -599.1 | -3.1 |
| M+F | Full-time | 15,555.5 | 15,220.5 | -335.0 | -2.2 |
| M+F | Part-time | 3,574.8 | 3,310.7 | -264.1 | -7.4 |
| M+F | Unemployment Rate | 5.7 | 8.2 | +2.5 | |
| M+F | Participation Rate | 65.5 | 64.7 | -0.8 | |
| M | Total | 10,047.8 | 9,797.6 | 250.2 | -2.5 |
| M | Full-time | 8,787.8 | 8,563.1 | -224.7 | -2.6 |
| M | Part-time | 1,260.0 | 1,234.5 | -25.5 | -2.0 |
| M | Unemployment Rate | 5.9 | 8.2 | +2.3 | |
| M | Participation Rate | 69.9 | 69.2 | -0.7 | |
| F | Total | 9,082.5 | 8,733.6 | -348.9 | -3.8 |
| F | Full-time | 6,767.7 | 6,657.4 | -110.3 | -1.6 |
| F | Part-time | 2,314.8 | 2,076.2 | -238.6 | -10.3 |
| F | Unemployment Rate | 5.4 | 8.3 | +2.9 | |
| F | Participation Rate | 61.3 | 60.3 | -1.0 |
Jasmine Mangalaseril reviews the Red House Restaurant in Waterloo today – I’ve always loved this place. Good review.