Labour Market Matters - August 2014

Canada’s population has been aging steadily for several decades. In 1976, the median age of men in the population was only 27.2 years, but by 2013, had risen to 39.4 years. The trend reflects both an increase in the life expectancy of Canadians at birth and also the impact of the aging baby boom generation. While youth have historically experienced higher unemployment rates than older workers, the post-recession reality of a workforce still dominated by the baby boom generation – some of whom have delayed retirement due to uncertain economic conditions left behind from the most recent recession – has created concern that older workers are filling jobs that would otherwise have been held by youth. Whereas some countries have attempted to address this concern with policy initiatives providing older workers with incentives to retire early (such as the Job Release Scheme (JRS) of the 1970s and 80s in the United Kingdom), such policy proposals are often criticized as lacking a theoretical foundation – given the fact that older workers and youth are generally not perfect substitutes for one another. A study entitled “Workforce Aging and the Labour Market Opportunities of Youth: Evidence from Canada†(CLSRN Working Paper no. 139) by CLSRN affiliates Sundip Dhanjal and Tammy Schirle (both of Wilfrid Laurier University) estimates the effect of workforce aging on youth unemployment, employment, wages and school enrolment. The study finds no evidence to suggest youth labour market outcomes would improve if fewer older individuals were active in the labour market – and instead find some evidence that an aging workforce could have positive implications for young workers. While high school shootings make up a relatively small percentage of teenage murders, their negative impact on student psyche can be lasting and damaging. Extremely violent incidents could be a distraction from learning, and fear and the perception of an unsafe learning environment could impede students from being open to new opportunities that are essential to learning and, even more problematically, students may avoid attending school. Violent incidents can affect the allocation of teaching time. These factors could influence students’ cognitive performance and behavioral outcomes. Apart from the emotional and psychological trauma inflicted by school shootings, what impacts do these events have on academic performance of students who survive these events and return to school? A CLSRN study entitled “The Effect of High School Shootings on Schools and Student Performance†(CLSRN Working Paper no. 136) by Louis-Philippe Beland (Louisiana State University) and Dongwoo Kim (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) find that school shootings significantly decrease the enrollment of students in grade 9 (high-school entrance grade), and test scores in Math and English