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Based on Labour Force Survey data for Canada over the period 1998 to 2018, we find occupational licensing raised average real wages from 6.1% in 1998 to 13.8% by 2018, slightly less for propensity score matching estimates, suggesting the effect is somewhat lower after adjusting for unobservable factors that can affect pay. Unconditional quantile regressions indicate the licensing effects on wages are greater at the higher ends of the wage distribution, with those inequality enhancing effects becoming more pronounced over time. In contrast, the union wage premium declined steadily from 9.2% in 1998 to 5% in 2018, with a substantial premium at the bottom of the wage distribution but a steady decline at the top, becoming negative at higher parts of the wage distribution, with those equality enhancing effects becoming less pronounced over time. Overall, the estimates for Canada indicate that occupational licensing contributes to wage inequality, and the effect is increasing over time, while unions reduce overall wage inequality, but this equalizing effect is decreasing over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the micro files of the Canadian Census we document an increasing earnings penalty for cohorts of immigrants arriving after the late-1970s, especially for the most recent cohort. We also find much quicker assimilation rates for these cohorts, especially for the most recent cohort. Since the late-1970s, the increasing earnings penalty dominated their more rapid assimilation, so that immigrants exhibited ever-deteriorating patterns of integration into the Canadian labour market. For the most recent cohort (2002–2006), this reversed itself, suggesting that the tide may have turned. We find this for both men and women. Our findings are robust across alternative regression specifications, as well as a sample that only considers full-time and full-year workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a cross-country survey of attitudes toward work and unions, which includes a sample of managers in both the US and Canada, to explore whether there is greater attitudinal hostility to unions in the U.S. Our estimates indicate that American manager's attitudes towards unions are, perhaps surprisingly, less hostile than those of Canadian managers. We explain this first finding by the differential effect of perceived union power, which is greater in Canada than the US and which is correlated negatively with union approval. We also find that US managers are less likely to use extreme methods to oppose union organizing drives, implying that the lower union rates in the US as compared to Canada are not likely the result of greater negativity towards unions themselves but rather some other factor or combination of factors. The implication is that if Canadian managers faced the same labor relations playing field as their US counterparts, they would likely find it easier to thwart union certification drives as well. Alternatively stated, Canadian-style labor relations reforms (such as card-check systems or quicker certification votes) could perhaps tip the balance in favor of unions when organizing in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the effect of minimum wages on poverty for Canada using data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for 1997 to 2007 and find that minimum wages do not have a statistically significant effect on poverty and this finding is robust across a number of specifications. Our simulation results, based on the March 2008 Labour Force Survey (LFS), find that only about 30 % of the net earnings gain from minimum wage increases goes to the poor while about 70 % 'spill over' into the hands of the non-poor. Furthermore, we find that job losses are disproportionately concentrated on the poor. Our results highlight that, political rhetoric not-withstanding, minimum wages are poorly targeted as an anti-poverty device and are at best an exceedingly blunt instrument for dealing with poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sector Councils in Canada are a form of non-union representation that have been described as 'unique in the world' and they represent approximately half of the workforce in Canada. Their impact on 44 workplace and human resource practices of firms is estimated from a worker-firm matched data set, the Workplace and Employee Survey, for the years 1999-2006. Surprisingly, Sector Councils were significantly associated with positive outcomes for only 4 of the 44 outcome measures and with negative outcomes for 28 of the outcome measures, while 12 of the relationships were statistically insignificant. Possible explanations for this surprising result are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the effect that dropping out of high school has on 8 outcomes pertaining to wages, employment and subsequent skill acquisition for youths. Our analysis is based on the older cohort of the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) for 2003, an ideal data set because it contains a rich array of outcome measures and characteristics on individuals when they are in high school and a few years later. Our analysis indicates that dropouts have poorer wage and employment outcomes, and they do not make up for their lack of education through additional skill acquisition and training. The analysis thereby suggests that policies to curb dropping out could have both desirable efficiency effects (high returns) as well as distributional effects (high returns to otherwise more disadvantaged groups) and potential social spillover effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How academic research affects labor and social policy is viewed through a program evaluation framework that highlights the difficulties of determining the causal impact of such research on public policy. The effect is illustrated by examples. My conclusion is that academic research can have a modest to substantial impact on policy. Its impact is enhanced if it has a number of key characteristics: high quality; reputable researchers involved; synthesized and translated into a language understood by policy makers, the general public, and the media; credible champions who will broker and defend it, in the political process or in the public realm; timeliness; and, political acceptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use unique survey data, collected by the Workers’ Compensation Board of Ontario, to estimate the labor supply response of disabled male workers to benefit payouts and their post-injury wage. Our data enable us to fill gaps in the existing literature by estimating the hours as well as the return-to-work response for younger as well as older workers, based on objective rather than subjective self-reporting of disability status. Our results suggest a strong positive incentive effect from higher wages a and that lump-sum benefit payouts that are not reduced if earnings increased generally do not have adverse incentives on the return-to-work and hours decision, except for an income effect over the longer life cycle of younger men. We also discuss the policy implications of our estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the influence of labor unions on the public sector. In their classic article on the Two Faces of Unionism and their subsequent book, What Do Unions Do?, Freeman and Medoff (1979, 1984, respectively) emphasized the positive-voice face of unions in contract to the conventional monopoly face that emphasized rent extraction. Under its monopoly face, unions can have negative effects on resource allocation, productivity, and social welfare by fostering strikes and restrictive work practices as well as by raising wages above the competitive norm. In contrast, by serving as the institutional embodiment of voice at the workplace, Unions could have positive effects on productivity, cost, and social welfare.

Based on longitudinal data from the Master File of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for Canada for 1993-1999, we provide multinomial logit estimates of the effect of minimum wages on the probability of being in one of four schooling-employment states as well as transitions across the states. We find that minimum wage increases led to large and statistically significant reductions in the employment of teenagers but had no net effect on their school enrollment or on the individual transition probabilities. We also find no substantial substitution of students for nonstudents or students leaving school to queue for the higher minimum wage jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine demand for union membership amongst young and adult workers in Britain, Canada, and the United States. Using a model of representation advanced by Farber (1983, 2001) and Riddell (1993), we find that a majority of the union density differential between young and adult workers in all three countries is due to supply-side constraints rather than a lower desire for unionization by the young. This finding lends credence to two conjectures: first, tastes for collective representation do not differ substantially among workers (either by nationality or by age) and second, union representation can be fruitfully modeled as an experience-good. The experience-good properties of union membership explain the persistence of union density differentials (in this case between youth and adults) in the face of equal levels of desired representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike federal regulation in the United States, variation in provincial regulation across Canada provides a natural laboratory to examine the impact of public policy on pension coverage. Using data from a nationally representative sample of private sector workers in Canada in 1994, we find that higher marginal taxes, earlier vesting, and more permissive eligibility rules increase coverage, while a ban on mandatory retirement has a negative, but insignificant effect. Implications for differences in defined-benefit coverage between Canada and the United States, and pension theory, research, and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a study that examined employee preferences for pension plan features. Data from 517 survey respondents were used to analyze the determinants of the shares of a hypothetical $1,000 budget that employees were given to allocate to cash wages and pension plan features involving early retirement, postponed retirement, and inflation protection. Employee preferences for pension plan features generally reflected the potential for pensions to deal with such factors as risk sharing, family life-cycle decision making, and cash constraints, as those factors were related to observable personal and demographic characteristics of employees as well as to their labor market circumstances and wealth embodied in their pension plans. Amongst other implications, the highlights are that the demand is greater for early retirement and inflation protection than for postponed retirement, and the demand for early retirement is likely to increase as the work force ages, dual pension families become more prominent, and layoffs and job changing continue.