Housing Bubble II: The Quest To Build Enough Homes Where People Actually Need Them

[Hecate]

And you are wrong wage growth in Canada declined in 2021 and 2022 when compared with inflation.

https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/we...up%20in%202023.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Hecate

Our problem is made even worse because much of the full time job growth in the country since 2019 has all been in the public sector not private. So the federal government is creating positions to pad their employment stats making shit look better than it actually is.

There are around 360,000 federal employees but the entire Canadian public sector has a total of 3.6 million workers.
So only 10% of public workers are related to the federal government. Even if you hire of fire 10% of the federal workforce (36,000), This would only change the unemployment rate by 0.16% if no new jobs were created elsewhere in the economy. The other 90% of the public sector employees are at the provincial and municipal levels and it includes 100,000s of medical staffs, utility workers, teachers, etc.. which Canadian have been demanding more of lately.

FYI The total Canadian workforce is 22 million

[Hecate]

Originally Posted by Nite

There are around 360,000 federal employees and the public sector in Canada has a total of 3.4 million workers
So only 10% of public workers are related to the federal government.
The other 90% of the public sector employees are at the provincial and municipal levels and it includes 100,000s of medical staffs which Canada have been demanding more of lately.

lol, you’re really not getting it. Canada created 398,000 jobs last year, of that 208,000, OVER HALF, were in the public sector. That is not sustainable growth.
Last April we created 90,000 jobs, over 50,000 were part time positions. That is not sustainable growth.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...ublic%20sector.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by Hecate

lol, you’re really not getting it. Canada created 398,000 jobs last year, of that 208,000, OVER HALF, were in the public sector. That is not sustainable growth.
Last April we created 90,000 jobs, over 50,000 were part time positions. That is not sustainable growth.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...ublic%20sector.

It's worth considering that tackling many of the most acute societal challenges we currently face simply require public servants.

Cities processing planning and development applications too slowly? Additional staff is part of the solution.

Hospital emergency room wait times too long? Additional nurses and doctors is definitely part of the solution.

We need to run existing transit transit more frequently, and new projects put into operation when they are eventually completed? Additional drivers, mechanics, customer service staff, etc., are definitely going to be needed.

Street homelessness is exploding in most urban areas? Additional City staff, whether 'social navigators', police, and social program managers, are what a municipality can do in the near-term and under its own jurisdictional auspices. Not to mention, 2023 data is still well within the influence of multi-year pandemic-related government programs.

An aside, it is simply remarkable how the pandemic is being so forcefully pushed down the memory hole/deliberately going unrecognized when some seek to score political points.

Anyway, I am not saying that the ratio of private sector to public sector jobs you quoted is appropriate or sustainable. However, I am saying that I am not surprised that during a period of multiple societal crises, additional public sector employment is part of the response.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Hecate

lol, you’re really not getting it. Canada created 398,000 jobs last year, of that 208,000, OVER HALF, were in the public sector. That is not sustainable growth.
Last April we created 90,000 jobs, over 50,000 were part time positions. That is not sustainable growth.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...ublic%20sector.

You were saying that federal government was expanding the public service to reduce unemployment, so I showed you that significant change in the number of federal workers wouldn't make a difference to the unemployment rate.

Originally Posted by Hecate

So the federal government is creating positions to pad their employment stats making shit look better than it actually is.

now for the 208,000 more increase in the public service that is a 6% increase in the 3.6 million sector in one year.
With the expansion in healthcare funding alone and dealing with various societal issue in the country and demand for more government interventions, a 6% increase in the public sector doesn't seem that socking to me.
Again the vast majority of the public sector is at the municipal level.

The private sector is dealing with 5%+ interest rates so it's expected that they wouldn't expand much in this environment so nearly 200,000 net private sector jobs is impressive. As interest rates fall, the private sector will create more jobs.

Lets not forget that the unemployment rate is still only 1% higher than the lowest rate in 50 years, so the Canadian economy is not dealing with an unemployment problem.

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

It's worth considering that tackling many of the most acute societal challenges we currently face simply require public servants. Cities processing planning and development applications too slowly? Additional staff is part of the solution. Hospital emergency room wait times too long? Additional nurses and doctors is definitely part of the solution. We need to run existing transit transit more frequently, and new projects put into operation when they are eventually completed? Additional drivers, mechanics, customer service staff, etc., are definitely going to be needed. Street homelessness is exploding in most urban areas? Additional City staff, whether 'social navigators', police, and social program managers, are what a municipality can do in the near-term and under its own jurisdictional auspices. Etc.

I am not saying that the ratio of private sector to public sector jobs you quoted is appropriate or sustainable. However, I am saying that I am not surprised that during a period of multiple societal crises, additional public sector employment is part of the response.

And to tie it into the actual topic of this thread, one of the major reasons for delays in cities approving development permits to get housing built is staffing shortages, so they need to hire more people as well.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Hecate

And you are wrong wage growth in Canada declined in 2021 and 2022 when compared with inflation.

https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/we...up%20in%202023.

yes, now add on 2023 and 2024 because my comment was not limited to those 2 years alone.
Overall wage growth since 2021, and especially after 2022, when Canada allowed immigration back into the country, is higher than inflation

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Hecate

They are not service jobs. Service jobs are restaurants and stores. The service industry.

"The service sector is the third sector of the economy, after raw materials production and manufacturing.
The service sector includes a wide variety of tangible and intangible services from office cleaning to rock concerts to brain surgery.
The service sector is the largest sector of the global economy in terms of value-added and is especially important in more advanced economies."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s...ed%20economies.

Any job that is not related to manufacturing or extracting raw minerals is a service job.

[Hecate]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

And to tie it into the actual topic of this thread, one of the major reasons for delays in cities approving development permits to get housing built is staffing shortages, so they need to hire more people as well.

Requests for Building permits have dropped 13% in the past year, combined with all these new employees we should be seeing a substantial improvement in the approval times, yet it’s getting worse.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Cities processing planning and development applications too slowly? Additional staff is part of the solution.

This is mainly due to stifling zoning over-regulations. You can see that play out in Toronto, where every lot is forced through a multi-year rezoning exercise, because the existing zoning in place is so arcane. This is a ton of extra and unnecessary bureaucracy generated by overzealous regulations. Only NIMBYs win from this setup.

If Canada adopted Japan's laissez faire zoning, this country's planning departments would need only a fraction of the staff to function properly.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by jonny24

Nite, could you show the same for labour participation rate? Since that's measured differently than unemployment.

Part time vs full time vs "gig" would be interesting too.

There should also be an adjustment for excess "fake" international students who are actively job searching. They are in reality TFWs.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

There should also be an adjustment for excess "fake" international students who are actively job searching. They are in reality TFWs.

That would probably bring the unemployment rate back down to 5%, lowest in 50 years range, which is what triggered the worker shortage crisis and the demand for more workers by business and the loosening on international student work restrictions.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

And to tie it into the actual topic of this thread, one of the major reasons for delays in cities approving development permits to get housing built is staffing shortages, so they need to hire more people as well.

How much of that is actually "staffing shortages", or is it rather overly complex rules and systems that require far more staff to operate than if we had a simpler and more streamlined system?

I've seen no data on this topic for municipal staff & building permits, but we definitely see elements of this in the federal bureaucracy. We keep hearing the excuse that passport offices need more staff to solve passport delays, CRA needs more staff to process tax returns faster, etc... but the productivity per employee is declining. The number of employees in almost every federal department is growing faster than the rate at which those employees are churning out stuff. CRA has half-doubled its workforce in the last five years yet people are waiting longer to get service.

The solution to a shortage of administrative staff isn't to hire more administrative staff. It's to simplify the system and introduce automation so we don't need as many of them. It would be much cheaper for taxpayers, and much more convenient for citizens, if getting help from the CRA on a tax question involved talking with ChatGPT rather than calling a number and waiting in line.

This is definitely not just a public sector problem. Our private sector in Canada is also full of useless or near-useless white collar jobs that could easily be replaced, not even with AI, but simply with better processes.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by Nite

That would probably bring the unemployment rate back down to 5%, lowest in 50 years range, which is what triggered the worker shortage crisis and the demand for more workers by business and the loosening on international student work restrictions.

No, I mean adjust the pool looking for work to include these fake students, and evidently it will increase the unemployment rate to better match reality on the ground.

Right now they're excluded from the statistical pool, and part of the reason is because StatCan has no reliable way to sample this transient population (because the government doesn't even have a clue who's really here or not here). It's a feature, not a bug that Trudeau decided to jack up the NPR population.

[casper]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

No, I mean adjust the pool looking for work to include these fake students, and evidently it will increase the unemployment rate to better match reality on the ground.

Right now they're excluded from the statistical pool, and part of the reason is because StatCan has no reliable way to sample this transient population (because the government doesn't even have a clue who's really here or not here). It's a feature, not a bug that Trudeau decided to jack up the NPR population.

The government should know who is in and not in the country. Border control lets them in and the airlines etc. report when they leave.

They are students, they should be in class learning. If they are working it should be minor part of their day.

[jonny24]

I don't know about you guys, but Nite has convinced me. Everything is fine and we have no problems

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by casper

The government should know who is in and not in the country. Border control lets them in and the airlines etc. report when they leave.

They are students, they should be in class learning. If they are working it should be minor part of their day.

Pretty sure we don't keep track of who leaves do we?

[Nite]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

No, I mean adjust the pool looking for work to include these fake students, and evidently it will increase the unemployment rate to better match reality on the ground.

Right now they're excluded from the statistical pool, and part of the reason is because StatCan has no reliable way to sample this transient population (because the government doesn't even have a clue who's really here or not here). It's a feature, not a bug that Trudeau decided to jack up the NPR population.

International students are included in Canada’s unemployment rate if they are actively participating in the labor market

FYI: This is how the unemployment rate is calculated:

Measuring Unemployment

The official Canadian statistics on unemployment come from the monthly Labour Force Survey of Statistics Canada, a sample survey of some 56,000 representative households in all provinces and territories, accounting for approximately 100,000 people. First Nations reserves and settlements, the Armed Forces and residents of institutions, such as prisons, hospitals, or nursing homes, are not covered.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....e/unemployment

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by Nite

International students are included in Canada’s unemployment rate if they are actively participating in the labor market

FYI: This is how the unemployment rate is calculated:



https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....e/unemployment

In reality how would the sample be able to properly capture the households of these hundreds of thousands of fake happy go lucky college international students? They're going to be transient without a fixed address (likely cramming into a basement with 8-12 other students) and many of them won't bother to file a tax return. Based on my past and present collaborations with StatCan (undoubtedly one of the very few competent government agencies in the federal bureaucracy), no question that it's an impossible task for StatCan to accurately account for these fake students.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by casper

The government should know who is in and not in the country. Border control lets them in and the airlines etc. report when they leave.

Ottawa has no idea who left temporarily, or who has permanently emigrated. Canada also doesn't have exit controls. All the NPRs travelling on a foreign passport isn't tracked that closely aside from reporting by airlines.

They are students, they should be in class learning. If they are working it should be minor part of their day.

Until Trudeau's Liberals roll the student employment rules back to Harper era limits, these fake students will continue to take advantage of these tractor sized employment loopholes.