While robots replace human workers on the factory floor, better-paid jobs are created to design, build and maintain the robots
The robots are coming, the robots are coming! They may not be an unstoppable evil army ready to take over the world as in a bad sci-fi movie, but they’re definitely making headway on factory assembly lines and increasingly in other industries. A United Kingdom research firm, Oxford Economics, did a study that covered seven…
Unionization would mean fewer jobs and fewer hours of work. The workers might be unsatisfied with their current position, but it’s certainly better than unemployment
The push for unionization among some food couriers at Foodora Canada and among hundreds of Uber drivers in Canada will ultimately do more harm than good for workers in the gig economy. The drive for unionization will actually result in increased unemployment and underemployment. Unionization defies the law of demand, a central economic concept. Unionizing…
Total automation, capitalist or communist, removes the very purpose of human existence
Since the publication of Fully Automated Luxury Communism in 2018, a manifesto by Aaron Bastani, millennials across Canada and the United States have embraced a new Marxism for the 21st century. This new socialism is based on the concept of a post-scarcity economy that embraces automation, the reduction of working hours and a universal income.…
Robert Day talks about the technology that Integrity Advocate has developed to verify that online students complete the training required of them
Integrity Advocate co-founder Robert Day is a licensed investigator and paralegal. Can you tell me what you do? Day: I’m a co-founder of a company called Integrity Advocate, as well as a licensed paralegal and investigator. I co-developed the patented technology that Integrity Advocate is known for, which addresses legality and effectiveness concerns associated with…
The job market will be flooded with cheap labour and Canadians will be denied spots at university
Recruiting and teaching international students in Canada is big business for private universities, and the federal government has backed a scheme that puts more cash in the pockets of university administrators and wreaks havoc with the Canadian job market. In 2000, some 122,665 people held study permits in Canada. In 2018, that number reached 572,415.…
Unions harm workers more than they help. And they seek a bigger slice of the economic pie, even while shrinking the pie through productivity loss
Labour Day is a day, as its name suggests, to celebrate labour. This is entirely appropriate – labour is a necessary input for the production of goods and services on which our standards of living rely. We make a mistake, however, when the celebration is of labour unions instead of the workers who supply the…
Index measures total employment, private-sector employment rate, unemployment rate and share of involuntary part-time workers
A North American ranking of labour market performance places Alberta closer to the bottom of the list of all 10 Canadian provinces and 50 U.S. states. The study, Measuring Labour Markets in Canada and the United States, 2019 by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian public policy think-tank, ranked Alberta 53rd out of 60. All 10…
What are the new jobs? How do you train for them? Every old-economy business needs to plan for next-economy transitions
How does work change in an era of climate crisis? What skills will have value and how do we acquire them? What advice do we give young people entering the job market? How do we retrain those whose skills are no longer in demand? What roles do colleges and universities play in this workplace transition?…
Alberta had the second highest level of labour productivity in 2018 among the provinces ($78.50 per hour) after Saskatchewan ($79.90) and just ahead of Newfoundland and Labrador ($76.90), according to ATB Financial’s Economics & Research Team. Productivity for Canada as a whole was $59.40 per hour. In its daily economic update, The Owl, ATB said…
The march of technology is inevitable, but the way its proceeds are distributed is a matter of choice. Here are some options
The RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) has been exploring the future of work. Like many organizations, it begins with the assumption that some 35 to 40 per cent of jobs will be directly impacted by artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, 3D printing, blockchain, stem cells and other technologies.…
The robots are coming, the robots are coming! They may not be an unstoppable evil army ready to take over the world as in a bad sci-fi movie, but they’re definitely making headway on factory assembly lines and increasingly in other industries. A United Kingdom research firm, Oxford Economics, did a study that covered seven…
