Long-Term Unemployment and Joblessness

Topic Box from the 2009 Ninth Annual Benchmark Report

A common concern about unemployment statistics is that they fail to record significant numbers of people who want to work but are excluded from the standard international definition of employment. For example, "discouraged workers," those who are not looking for work because they believe no jobs are available, are not counted because they have not looked for work in the past four weeks.

This topic is of particular relevance for BC as relatively low employment engagement has been shown to explain a large part of BC's poor performance on the Low Income Cut-Off.

A broader concept that is worth consideration is "long-term joblessness." It is usually defined as working-age people who were not in employment at the time of the interview and have not worked within the last one or two years.

An OECD analysis of this topic used data on men aged 25-54 because they are generally expected to be employed unless disabled or in extended education.

This analysis showed considerably higher ratios for long-term joblessness than long-term unemployment. In addition, Canada's rank went from third best to tenth best among the nineteen jurisdictions reviewed.

Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Employment Outlook, 2002.