"It means we're not gaining any ground, largely because we're losing the kind of jobs that pay family supporting wages and we're replacing them with jobs that pay much less," says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.
Canadians are missing out not just on higher hourly wages, but also on the health care and pension benefits that accompany them, he says.
Yet, on balance, more people are working in Canada than when the previous census was conducted.
The country posted the strongest employment growth of the seven major industrial economies between 2001 and 2006, increasing at an average annual rate of 1.7 per cent, well above the pace of second-place Italy at 1.2 per cent.
The strong employment growth has continued since 2006, Statistics Canada adds, a fact reflected in a jobless rate that now stands at a modern-day low of 5.8 per cent.
However, Canada's is a greying workforce. The median age -- where half are older and half younger -- tipped past 40 for the first time on this census and now sits at 41.2 years, up from 39.5 in 2001. In 2006, 15.3 per cent of the workforce was aged 55 and older, up from 11.7 per cent five years earlier.
StatsCan attributes this to the aging of the baby boomers and to older workers increasingly staying in the labour force.
But Geoff Bowlby, director of the agency's Labour Statistics Division warns that it's "inevitable that at some point soon we're going to see a big onslaught of retirements of baby boomers that should continue for about 20 years."
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http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=ef1c6079-d148-48d1-8dec-b44b2b2dbf5a&k=32294
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