Expect more of Trump’s ilk as job prospects continue to get bleaker

THE ELECTION OF DONALD Trump came as a shock to many, but not those who were paying attention to the numbers. No, not the polls – those were almost universally wrong – but to the underlying weaknesses in the economy, most notably the unemployment, underemployment and precarious work.

Rosy claims by politicians aside, the decades-long slide in the standard of living has not gone unnoticed by those not benefiting from unethical Wall Street tampering in the economy. Trump tapped into the anger of Middle America, the people who’ve lost their good-paying jobs to the neoliberal forces of globalization, predatory capitalism and subversion of democracy by corporatism.

Unlike the progressives – the real kind, not the sellouts touted by the Democratic party – Trump was able to capitalize on the dissent by feeding into some darker parts of the public’s anger, much of them well documented in the aftermath of the election.

That the rage is misplaced isn’t an issue yet, but it will be when Trump fails to deliver the kind of change envisioned by those who voted for him – a different kind of disappointment from Barack Obama’s failures to deliver hope and change.

Still, the wrath is not without merit, even on this ostensibly less dysfunctional side of the border. Canadians, too, have been embroiled in decades of declining real incomes and the loss of good jobs. Workers find themselves in precarious part-time or selfemployed positions. For many of those lucky enough to find full-time jobs, compensation levels are falling. The prospects for a better future are fading.

Again, it’s the numbers that tell the tale.

Take, for instance, this week’s release by CIBC of its latest employment quality index. The report, penned by deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal, details a steady decline in job quality over the last 20 years, eroding our ability to deal with future economic downturns, which are inevitable.

“Is the quality of employment in Canada on the decline? We think so,” says Benjamin Tal of his findings in On The Quality of Employment in Canada. “The share of low-paying jobs in Canada has been on the rise in the past two decades and might provide some insights on the ability of workers, in aggregate, to absorb future economic shocks.”

The report finds that the share of Canadians making less than the average wage each year has crept up to nearly 61 per cent from about 58 per cent over the last 20 years. The average wage today is about $25 an hour.

“Lower quality employment might help explain the sluggish growth in personal income.”

The dimming outlook is not lost on Canadians. Lower quality employment has been the norm for decades, coinciding with the declining middle class. The growing pressures aren’t unrelated to record high personal debt levels as Canadians borrow to offset changes in the employment market.

The report digs deeper to rule out demographic issues that can skew job quality trends, in particular, the declining share of young Canadians and the rising share of older Canadians. For Canadians in their prime working years (age 25 to 54 years), 53 per cent make less than the average wage today, up three percentage points from 20 years ago.

“The story is the same: The share of lower-paying jobs has been on the rise,” says Tal.

The most significant increase in the below-average paying jobs category occurred among those in the wage range of between 50 per cent and 100 per cent of the average wage in a given year. That group has seen its number rise by close to two million since 1997. Some 6.7 million workers fall into that wage category, indicating stagnation in the middle.

There has been some improvement at the bottom level of income earners, but that is not due to the economy or employers, but to regulation.

“The good news is that those at the lowest end of the wage spectrum are seeing relatively healthy wage gains – not due to bargaining power but mostly due to policy changes regarding minimum wages,” he notes. “But the group closer to the middle of the wage spectrum has seen sub-par growth.”

Even government claims about job creation have to be taken with a grain of salt, however, given that the country’s population grows steadily each year – hundreds of thousands of new jobs are needed just to tread water, as economist Jim Stanford noted in a study last year debunking the myth of “Canadian exceptionalism” following the 2008 recession.

“When Canadian officials boast that the pace of job-creation or GDP growth is relatively high compared to other countries, they neglect to mention that Canada’s economy must generate more growth and jobs, just to stand still. Other industrialized countries (like Japan or Germany), where population is stagnant or even declining, do not need to generate such significant annual expansion in order to protect existing benchmarks. Similarly, when political leaders claim that the absolute level of employment or production has regained and surpassed pre-recession peaks, they neglect to consider the impact of ongoing population growth in the several years since those pre-recession peaks were reached.”

What jobs are created tend to be part-time and precarious is often overlooked by governments falling all over themselves with any “good news” announcement – they have no interest in providing context for any numbers deemed positive.

The CIBC report notes that part-time situations account for 90 per cent of all jobs created in the last year. This is not just a blip, however, but represents a structural shift, along with the decline in the quality of

jobs on the whole.

Look at the numbers and do the math: working more and making less in increasingly crappy McJobs certainly add up to public anger.

Critics of corporate capitalism, “free” trade deals and policy written by lobbyists have been pointing out the problems for years. Now, many more people have finally seen for themselves that the neoliberal emperor is starkers, and the sight is anger-inducing.