Sean Speer Archives

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Frustrations of Canada’s Working Class Tied to Education

The Frustration of Canada’s Over-Credentialed Working Class

Do the Conservatives Understand the Working Class?

This Is Not Your Grandpa’s Working Class

“Canadian political leaders are right to voice support for the working class. But do they understand Canada’s new working class and do they have an agenda to match it?” Renze Nauta, Sosina Bezu, and Sean Speer ask probing questions in their commentary in the National Post.

^{Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash}

The Working Class Isn’t Who You Think It Is

“There’s been a major shift in the type of jobs that working-class Canadians do. The old image of blue-collar men on the manufacturing assembly line is no longer representative,” writes Sean Speer, who co-authored the Cardus report Canada’s New Working Class.

^{Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash}

Canada’s New Working Class

Canada’s New Working Class Requires New Policies and Priorities

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 29, 2022

OTTAWA, ON –Canadian leaders need a better understanding of the working class if they hope to develop an effective agenda to meet the challenges of inflation and economic turbulence. A new Cardus report entitled Canada’s New Working Class offers leaders a contemporary, modern understanding of the 6.5 million Canadians who are in the working class. One of the report’s key findings is that members of Canada’s working class are as likely to be women or recent immigrants in sales or service jobs as they are to be men doing blue-collar, mostly unionized, manufacturing work.

“Many have an image of the working class that’s stuck in the 1960s,” says report co-author Sean Speer, a fellow at the Public Policy Forum and the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, as well as editor at large at The Hub. “Today, the working class is more typically a Walmart cashier or an Amazon delivery driver than a General Motors factory worker or a Domtar mill hand.”

Other key findings in Canada’s New Working Class include:

Nearly half of working-class Canadians are in service-sector jobs today.
53% of working-class Canadians have a post-secondary certificate, diploma, bachelor’s degree, or higher.
The average hourly wage for working-class jobs ($21 per hour) is almost 42% lower than the average earned in non-working-class occupations ($36 per hour).
Nearly 50% of visible minorities were employed in working-class jobs compared to 39% of non–visible minorities in 2016.

Canada’s New Working Class also calls on leaders to adjust their policies and priorities.

“Anyone seeking to represent and serve working-class Canadians needs to consider a whole host of policies, including drug and dental benefits, childcare flexibility, labour regulation, and immigration,” says report co-author Renze Nauta, Work & Economics Program Director at Cardus. “This isn’t your dad’s working class. The old models don’t work anymore.”

Among its recommendations, the report calls for:

Solutions for workers who lack dental and drug coverage, possibly through federal subsidies to help lower-income individuals buy private insurance plans, or portable, government benefits for workers without employer-provided coverage.
Childcare flexibility and affordability for those who work multiple jobs, work part-time, or do shift work—possibly though a new refundable Child Care Expense Deduction to cover care outside the typical 9-to-5 framework.
Updated labour regulations to cover those doing ridesharing, delivery, or courier work through digital platforms.
New approaches by unions to make themselves relevant to the new working class by emphasizing collaborative approaches rather than adversarial labour relations and traditional political activism.
Improved credentials recognition for immigrants to help avoid forcing them into working-class jobs for which they are over-qualified.

Canada’s New Working Class is freely available at cardus.ca. To arrange an interview with a report co-author, please, contact Daniel Proussalidis at dproussalids@cardus.ca or 613-899-5174.

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MEDIA INQUIRIES
Daniel Proussalidis

Cardus – Director of Communications
613-899-5174
media@cardus.ca

Opinion: It’s no coincidence we have shortages in the most regulated sectors of our economy

As the federal election campaign reaches its final stretch, it’s increasingly clear, based on a combination of public polling and how the party leaders have allocated their own time, resources, and attention, that housing, health care, and childcare all rank near the top of the public policy agenda.

Although these three policy issues may seem quite different, they share one major commonality: they’re all cases of a persistent supply-demand gap that’s leading to shortages and in turn driving up prices or producing long wait lists, write Brian Dijkema, Sean Speer, and Aaron Wudrick.

CARDUS