Steven Tobin is chief executive officer of LabourX. Parisa Mahboubi is a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute.
While it would appear that part of the solution lies in simply hiring this untapped pool of people, the group includes long-term unemployed individuals as well as other vulnerable groups who face a variety of challenges in finding employment. Some have to uproot themselves and their families to relocate to job-rich areas. In other cases, those available and willing to work may not have the right skills required to take up the jobs that are on offer.
There is no better time to do this than during a recession, when the cost of training an unemployed worker is low compared with having a worker take time off for formal training in prosperous times. Making such investments when labour markets are tight renders them overdue, more expensive and more difficult to execute.
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