Social support for the unemployed

Today, there was some good news on the unemployment front in Canada. For the first time since January 2009, the unemployment rate fell below 8%.

For the past six months employment has been rising in Canada. The increases have been a little unpredictable, dropping in March to just 18,000 new jobs, and peaking in April to over 100,000 and down again in May. Today the Canadian Labour Force Survey reports that 93,000 new jobs were created in June, many within the private sector.

According to the Globe and Mail, June’s increases far exceeded expectations from economists across the country who were expecting that job creation would start to peter out in May, like it had in other countries in recovery. Plus, over half of the new jobs, 48,900 are full time positions with 44,200 temporary or part time jobs. This categorization is also an improvement on previous months.

Any decrease in the unemployment rate is good news for Canadians, but does this solve the problem of unemployment brought on by the recession? What about support for the unemployed, including those currently without jobs, and in the case of future recessions?

Almost 400,000 jobs were lost during the 2008-2009 recession and during the height of the crisis only 51% of the unemployed across Canada were receiving Employment Insurance. It is vitally important that Canada have a strong, consistent and reliable system of support for the unemployed - especially in times of crisis.

Now is the time, during this period of recovery, that the government not only invest in creating new jobs to replace those lost during the recession, but also invest in strengthening social support systems, especially programs like EI.