, but the design process and details are still being determined. Will this pandemic finally force policy makers, employers and insurance providers to respond to the challenges faced by working-age adults with disabilities?Entrepreneurial erosion
Initially, the 16 per cent of Canadian workers who are self-employed seemed to avoid the worst of the crisis. But while the rest of the labour market rapidly rebounded, the situation for the self-employed has continued to deteriorate. The breakdown by gender shows that men drove the initial decline, but their number has trended slightly higher since late 2020.
The pandemic created a remarkable drop in employment rates followed by a rapid and strong recovery with employment rates for the group of core-aged men and women now higher than prior to the pandemic. This graph shows the evolution of the number of multiple job holders relative to its level in November, 2000, by class of workers for core-aged workers. The number of multiple job holders steadily increased since 2000 among public sector and private sector full-time employees.
Canada was able to experience what resembles a V-shape recovery in its labour participation rate, whereas the U.S. participation-rate recovery has been closer to L-shaped. In particular, there was little evidence in Canada of the wave of retirements seen in the U.S. It also helps explain why there are still more people unemployed than there are job vacancies in Canada, contrary to the U.S., where there are more jobs available for every person sidelined that’s searching for a job.
Better job supply in Canada partly explains why wage growth has not surged nearly as much as in the U.S., where the increase has been especially significant in lower-paid occupations. Even though the context of significant labour shortages means that wage growth pressure will remain higher in both countries, for now it looks like the risk of an inflationary spiral related to wage pressures might be less acute in Canada than in the U.S.