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But the labour market has always been subject to shocks, especially those associated with technological change. According to this study, something like one Canadian worker in 15 loses her job each year. And that figure seems to have been quite stable over time. But these losses are more than offset by the creation of new jobs. Once someone is unempoyed, the probability that she'll find a job in a given month is around 0.25-0.33 - that is, the average duration of a spell of unemployment is 3-4 months.
In that context, the job losses due to outsourcing are almost imperceptible, and they are more than compensated by the rate of job creation. As you'll recall from those graphs I posted in the other thread, the Canadian and the US economies have consistently generated jobs at a rate faster than population growth.

The dislocated worker problem is real enough, but it's much smaller than what a casual glance at the headlines would suggest. It can be dealt with directly without monkeying with trade policy.

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My question is whether the slightly smaller numbers of workers changing jobs in the 1970s [according to the study] could be accounted for by workers quitting bad jobs and getting newer or better ones, while the slightly higher numbers for workers changing jobs more recently, are due to workers being fired and taking similar or inferior jobs?

"This study" is here

[ 27 January 2005: Message edited by: thwap ]