It's my belief that when someones time is up for drawing UI and they are no longer entitled to it that they are NOT included in the unemployment stats even though they are still unemployed.

Does anyone know if this is true?

I'm asking because if it is then the unemployemnt numbers never truly reflect the truth and may be misleading.

newtechguy, there is a group of people who fall under the category of given up looking for work, and that is not usually taken into account for unemployment rates. There could be a lot of that going on right now. Who knows?

newtechguy

These numbers are reported by Statscan. Take a look at their website. They publish:
Unemployment rate,
Employment rate, and
Participation rate.

The participation rate is the % of people who have a job or are receiving EI (unemployment rate + employment rate).

So if there is a sharp drop in the participation rate it could be because there are unemployed people who's EI has run out. However over time we are probably experiencing a slow decline in the participation rate due to our aging population.

The news from Calgary:

Calgary loses more jobs - year-over-year it's down by 8,300 jobs.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/employment+brightens+across+Canada+Calgary+loses+more+jobs+StatsCan/3782355/story.html

e.i is down,no w welfare is up.e.i claim just ran out for all 225 employess of rustads.only 15 percent have found work.

According to another report seven thousand more people were working last month than 12 months earlier in Prince George. The result is the unemployment rate dropping from 11.9% to 7.3% over the past year.

In the Cariboo, the rate dropped from 11.5% in October 2009 to 7.6% last month.

The other aspect of this, what is considered work? A part time job, for minimum wage or a full time job at a living wage. Just because say 3000 people found jobs doesn't mean the jobs are any where in their skill set or adequate remuneration

lunarguy .... one can beat the stats to death. BUT, if one is so inclined to do because one has the "feeling" something is wrong with what is coming out, then I think one ought to stay in tune with the stats a bit more and become familiar with them.

The unmployment stats are dumbed down stats from my point of view. So, if one wants to get smarter information, one needs to access the suite of available stats and begin to understand them a bit more. Once one has done a bit more research and understands it, I am sure there will still be questions, but they will be different, I would think.

Go to the bottom of the linked page and you will see a graph with the number employed and the hours worked which should answer your question.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/labour-travail/lfs-epa/lfs-epa-eng.htm

My interpolation of the graph is as follows:

January 2008
577 million hours of work
for 17.05 million employed
works out to an average of 33.84 hrs/employee

April 2009 (low point)
553 million hours of work
for 16.82 million employed
works out to an average of 32.88 hrs/employee

October 2010
573 million hours of work
for 17.2 million employed
works out to an average of 33.31 hrs/employee

So, compared to before the economic downturn, we have more people employed now than 2.75 years ago, but they are working on average 33.31 hours rather than 33.84 hours .....

That can mean a lot of different things:
1. less overtime (you know, those people who work 50 hours resulting in others working 30 hours)
2. more people working less than 40 hours/week.

We must also remember that a "normal" week's job can vary from 40 hours to 37.5 hours to 35 hours.

So part of that could mean job shifts from a higher weekly hours job to a lower weekly hours job .... so still working full time, maybe even for an increased salary, but fewer hours.

It is not quite as simple as it might appear to be to compare apples to apples in this game.

BTW, the fall down from hours worked prior to the economic downturn to the low point of the economic downturn is 4.16%.

The loss in employment was 1.35%.