Job quality at record low; problem structural, no relief in sight: CIBC

TORONTO — A major Canadian bank says job quality in Canada is at a record low and shows no sign of turning around.

The CIBC Canadian employment quality index was down 1.8 per cent from a year ago.

The index measures the distribution of full and part-time jobs, the split between self-employment and paid-employment, and the compensation ranking of full-time paid employment jobs in more than 100 industry groups.

The bank says the drop in Canadian job quality is more structural than cyclical in nature and likely can’t be reversed by monetary policy.

CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal says the chief culprit is often seen as the growth in the number of part-time jobs, which have risen much faster than full-time employment. Tal says the damage caused to full-time employment by each recession has been, in many ways, permanent.

But on the bright side, in the past year at least, he says the number of full-time jobs rose twice as fast as the number of part-time jobs — a factor that worked to offset some of the recent softening in the index.