"Their jobs"

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, October 10, 2008 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – The Canadian economy, defying all predictions, created a record number of new jobs last month, giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives fresh ammunition Friday to make their case that they are the best stewards of Canada’s economy.

Statistics Canada said Friday that, in September, the economy created 107,000 new jobs, defying predictions of economists who were expecting only one-tenth as many new jobs.
Statistics Canada said that it has never recorded such a large one-month gain since it first began collecting this data in 1976.

Wage growth was also strong, Statistics Canada said, an indication that those who have lost good-paying jobs in the still-ailing manufacturing sector, for example, have been able to find new jobs with comparable salaries.

Year-over-year wage growth stood at 4.6 per cent in September, well above the current rate of inflation, which is standing at 3.5 per cent.

When will this Prime Minister do something show he cares about this Great Depression soup lines Dirty Thirties R. B. Bennett thirty-year low in unemployment?

Why you won’t get daycare

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

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The twin pressures of work and parenthood descend on Sara Renihan every weekday at 7:30 a.m when she drops off her daughter Sadie at a local day home. With her two-year-old in safe hands, she races 30 km from her west Toronto neighbourhood to a daily meeting at her workplace north of the city—a hair-raising, rush-hour commute that requires Renihan, a purchasing manager for a commercial bakery, to punch the accelerator at every break in traffic. “I have to be there by 8:30 a.m.,” she says. “At some point every day, I’m going 160 km/h.”

Renihan knows better than to expect sympathy from her employer. In a sector where people routinely work 50-hour weeks, the time-honoured separation of work and family remains an ironclad rule. So when her supervisor raised the topic of child care during her job interview, she knew it wasn’t out of altruism: “The question was whether I had the resources in place to juggle these demands.” Still, with the market for skilled workers at a premium, Renihan wonders at times why better arrangements aren’t available to the growing number of working parents like her.

It’s an enduring curiosity. We’re in the midst of one of the tightest labour markets in Canadian history, while daycare spaces are so scarce the federal government is offering a 25-per-cent tax credit to companies that create new ones. Yet only 19 of the many enlightened employers to make this year’s Top 100 offer some form of child care assistance, financial or otherwise, and only nine boast on-site daycares at which their employees receive priority. A recent survey of employers by the Canadian Payroll Association was even more stark, rating child care dead last among benefits provided, with only two per cent of employers offering it. You could chalk this up to a reluctance among organizations when it comes to involvement in their workers’ home lives. But it’s not as if they haven’t entered the private sphere in other ways, providing everything from crisis counselling to days when employees are allowed to bring pets to work. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they were afraid of kids.

This reluctance seems all the stranger when you consider the rewards for lending a helping hand. As far back as the early 1980s, companies like the National Bank of Canada were moving aggressively into child care, setting up what would become a chain of daycares situated around its headquarters in downtown Montreal. Though not in this year’s Top 100, the bank has received laurels in federal government labour reports for its progressive attitude toward the issue, and a few other organizations have followed suit. KPMG, the Toronto-based accounting and management consultancy, provides a general subsidy that employees can use for elder care or child care. L’Oréal, the Montreal-based maker of beauty products, McGill University, Toronto’s University Health Network—all count among the Top 100 organizations that have crossed this apparently forbidding frontier. Most are pleased to tout the benefits of their move in their reports or recruitment literature.

Steve Jobs, still not dead, still skinny

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 5:36 PM - 1 Comment

The man spells it out for us, while introducing the new iPods today. This, in response to Bloomberg’s accidental running of his obituary last month. 

(via Gizmodo)

It's about jobs, not Jobs

By Jason Kirby - Monday, July 28, 2008 at 3:43 PM - 0 Comments

A friend of mine who owns a pile of Apple shares, which have fallen nearly 20 per cent in value over the last couple of months, asked why the stock is so dependent on whether CEO Steve Jobs has recurrent cancer or not. It’s easy to see why he’d think this way . Since the launch of the iPhone 3G last month, Apple shares have not behaved the way they were supposed to, meaning they didn’t skyrocket. Bullish analysts have attributed this failure to launch to continued heavy media attention around Jobs’ gaunt appearance (Saturday’s New York Times said he doesn’t have cancer) and whether Apple’s board should be more forthright about the CEO’s health.

Interesting questions both. And I realize Jobs is an important guy and all. But couldn’t it be that shrewd investors are simply worried about the other jobs in the equation, or the lack thereof? Unemployment is on the rise in the U.S., while consumer confidence has reached lows not seen since this…

… was cutting edge Apple. As one Bloomberg commentator wrote last week, “Optimists Buy IPhones While Pessimists Hoard Gold.” Given the fact the company just lowered its guidance for the last quarter of the year by $500 million, you can’t blame investors for fretting about the jobs issue that really matters. And I’m not talking about the one in the black turtle neck.

Your Steve Jobs iPhone fix

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 10:38 AM - 0 Comments

This video has been making the rounds on the Interweb. A 60-second round-up of Steve Jobs’ iPhone love-in earlier this week. Like crack for Apple fans:

iPhone: the second coming

By Colin Campbell - Monday, June 9, 2008 at 2:53 PM - 0 Comments

The rumours are true. It’s really here. Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s new 3G iPhone today. It’s thinner than the original, has a black plastic back, and better battery life. The best part, it will cost only US$200. Expect to see it in Canada by early July. All the glorious details at Macrumors.com.