User:Cgsheehan/Discouraged worker

Canada Draft - Additions
In Canada discouraged workers are often referred to as hidden unemployed because of their behavioral pattern, and are often described as on the margins of the labour force. Since the numbers of discouraged workers and of unemployed generally move in the same direction during the business cycle and the seasons (both tend to rise in periods of low economic activity and vice versa), some economists have suggested that discouraged workers should be included in the unemployment numbers because of the close association.

The information on the number and composition of the discouraged worker group in Canada originates from two main sources. One source is the monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a monthly survey that provides an estimate of both employment and unemployment. The LFS’ definition of discouraged workers has not changed since 1997. It is defined as people who were willing and available to work during the reference week but did not work because they believed there was no suitable work available. which identifies persons who looked for work in the past six months but who have since stopped searching.

The other source is the Survey of Job Opportunities (SJO), which is much closer in design to the approach used in many other countries. In this survey, all those expressing a desire for work and who are available for work are counted, irrespective of their past job search activity.

In Canada, while discouraged workers were once less educated than "average workers", they now have better training and education but still tend to be concentrated in areas of high unemployment. Discouraged workers are not seeking a job for one of two reasons: labour market-related reasons (worker discouragement, waiting for recall to a former job or waiting for replies to earlier job search efforts) and personal and other reasons (illness or disability, personal or family responsibilities, going to school, and so on).

The table below uses the data from the LFS since 2016. Unemployment was slowly rising from the year 2016 where it was 10,115,700 people to 2019 where the number increased to 10,555,000 people. Similar to the rest of the world, the Covid-19 pandemic caused an even greater increase in the total unemployment, affecting a high of 11,156,000 people. Among the set of the population classified as discouraged workers, there is a greater rise, going from 21,800 people in 2019 to 70,400 in 2020.

LFS Reason for not looking for work x 1000: Both sexes, ages 15 and older.

It is worth noting that there is a vast population of Aboriginal people that reside in Canada. Canada classifies the following  three groups under the broad term Aboriginal: the First Nations, Inuit, and the Metis. Statistics Canada does not measure Aboriginal unemployment separate from the population as a whole, but the Aboriginal people make up a big portion of the unemployed and discouraged worker count. The 2008 recession hit the Aboriginals harder than the rest of the population, which created a pattern of high rates of unemployment and discouraged workers.

The Aboriginal have greater restrictions to work than the normal population due to race, lower human capital, and education. These factors subject the population to more part-time-part-year work, layoffs, job loss and lower pay. Dealing with this over time produces more discouraged workers, and produces a smaller labor force participation. Aboriginal peoples were three times as likely to be discouraged workers than the rest of the population.

Australia Draft
In Australia, discouraged workers are recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) into a category of potential workers who are not actively seeking work. In order to be categorized as discouraged, individuals must a) want to work, b) be available to start working within 4 weeks, and c) are not actively applying for jobs because they are discouraged. According to ABS, there were 808,000 persons classified as unemployed in February of 2021 plus an additional 1.157 million marginally attached to the labor force. The 113,000 discouraged workers fall into this marginally attached group.

The top three reasons that discouraged workers in Australia did not actively seek work in the week prior were:


 * 1) “Considered too young or too old by employers”
 * 2) “No jobs in locality, line of work or no jobs at all”
 * 3) “No jobs in suitable hours”

The table below shows how there has been an overall increase in the number of discouraged workers in Australia, even with decreases from 2015 to 2016 and again from 2018 to 2019. As with many other countries, the number of discouraged workers increases during times of economic downturn which would explain the increases seen in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, women are more likely to be discouraged workers than men in Australia.

The Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at The Australian National University has done further research of discouraged workers within Australia’s Indigenous population. As discussed by Hunter and Gray, Indigenous Australians are more than three times more likely to become discouraged than the Australian population as a whole. Similar to what is seen in the entire Australian population, Indigenous females experience higher rates of discouraged workers as compared to males. The top two reasons for becoming discouraged for the indigenous population as a whole were “childcare and other family responsibilities” and “studying/returning to studies.”