so what does Minister of Jobs, Shirley Bond say about this. Our job market is not increasing, mills, stores closing and Shirley remains silent

P. G. Unemployment rate up? Fewer people choosing to move to Alberta, I guess.

Look at it from the other side of the equation. We produced or procured 100% of our goods and services with only 93% of our workforce employed. Viewed that way we’re still hopelessly inefficient. If unemployment wasn’t accompanied by unemPAYment we would be extending it, and viewing it as a release from drudgery rather than a curse to be further afflicted with.

The glass isn’t half full or half empty. It’s just dirty. Fine interpretation. Works for me.

OMG I can’t believe this.I thought we were told from our political leaders that jobs are realy ramping up in this area and we will need millions of new workers.

It’s not just labor that’s unemployed, but capital, too.

On average, in ‘normal’ economic times, we utilise about 76% of our rated productive capacity.

When we have a ‘boom’ that rises to around 85%.

So even at the best of times we have already 15% more productive capacity, on average, than we ever ‘physically’ use.

But ‘financially’ we have to PAY for 100% of that productive capacity. (Because there’s no one other than the general public TO pay for it). And we do that through the prices we pay for what it makes for our consumption.

Prices charged us on the 76 to 85 % of it we DO use.

Prices that have to be high enough for that 76 to 85% to cover 100% of what that productive capacity cost.

And Unions go on strike for higher pay (which only flows through as higher costs into still higher prices), and believe we’re getting ahead because we all work with “bigger figures”? ‘Tis to laugh at the stupidity of it all, as we price ourselves out of the foreign markets we hoped to capture, while the few still working have to bear increasingly the keep of those who aren’t.

Far better to realise that all ‘money’ is simply ‘accounting’, and if it can’t properly relate ‘production’ to ‘consumption’ so that we can fully draw upon what plant already exists WITHOUT having to create more of it, just to distribute incomes sufficient for us to do that, we need to make some adjustments to it.

Makes one wonder, too, as to how many of those ‘new jobs’ our politicos are always yapping about, are really just replacements for people finally retiring out of existing jobs.

Many of whom are already past retirement age, but haven’t retired because they’ve inadequate incomes to live on at a decent standard of living. Age will catch up to them, eventually, and force them out of the workforce.

The solid middle class jobs have been disappearing throughout BC; to be replaced with unstable “McJobs” that dont pay strong wages; consumers reduce buying. Economy is only helping the insiders of current political gravy train

As long as ALL costs are included in and have to be recovered from prices, and CURRENT overall labor costs continue to fall IN RATIO to overall capital costs as components of those prices ~ which they do with every advancement of technology that displaces labor, and labor incomes ~ then those overall labor costs (most people’s incomes) which are only a PART, and a declining part, of overall costs, are collectively inadequate for those prices to be fully paid. Exponentially rising DEBT bridges the ‘gap’. While it can.

Higher wages won’t correct this. There may be limited brief respite for those receiving them, but the illusion of new found prosperity is quickly displaced by the reality of still higher prices, and an even wider ‘gap’.