Today, Hanne Kjöller reports from a Stockholm seminar hosting Howard Duncan from the Metropolis project. The question is why Canada succeeds why Sweden fails, but for some reason, the mentioned factors do not convince me.
Kjöller starts off by stating that the Canadian immigration system is vastly different from the Swedish, where Canada is much more picky about who it accepts. This is not a very good representation of what's going on. While it is true that refugees are a comparatively small group, it is not true that the rest of the immigrants arrive through the well-known points system. The points, which rewards people for high academic achievements and good linguistic ability, only apply to the highly skilled immigrant stream, but there are two other streams, too. One is the economic class, entrepreneurs that are moving their businesses to Canada when they come to live here. The other is the family class. No points are applied to this category, the only caveat being that the sponsoring family must be able to support the immigrant economically.
Even so, Canadian immigrants are generally highly skilled, but Canada, like Sweden, still does have a discussion about the problem with the fabled doctor cab-driver (though in my experience, occupations that require certification of some kind tend to be more generally problematic to enter for immigrants than others). It could also be noted that the Canadian debate often discusses to what extent the points system itself is too focused on letting academics in, when there is a serious skills shortage also in trades and crafts that is not addressed in the current points system. Calls have been made to reform it to allow a greater diversity of skilled immigrants to enter the country, but so far, there has been no real attempts by the government to address the issue.
Secondly, it's a myth that Swedish immigrants are all illiterate (and while Kjöller might not making this assertion, it certainly sounds like she thinks that the Swedish immigrants are much lower educated than their Canadian counterparts). Studies from the early 00s show clearly that academics are overrepresented among Swedish immigrants. Indeed, Swedish immigrant academics have been under-employed and unemployed to a higher degree than native Swedes ever since the mid 80s, according to an old SACO report from the early 90s. So the problem has persisted since a time when Sweden boasted practically full employment.
Thirdly, Canadians, and particularly researchers at the Metropolis Project, are quite worried about the socioeconomic development of immigrants there. It used to be like Duncan says, that immigrants economically catch up with native born Canadians after a few years in the country. Since the early 90s, though, that catch up time has become longer and longer, and some are started to worry that some groups of immigrants might not catch up at all anymore. This makes we ask why Duncan would say that this is no problem in Canada.
Fourthy, to say that there is no controversy about multiculturalism in Canada is patently false. The policy has been increasingly questioned during the last decade or so.
Still, even with all those caveats, Canadian immigrants are much less socioeconomically challenged than Swedish immigrants are. But given that academics are overrepresented in both groups, I have to ask if the educational levels in the immigrant population can adequately answer the question of why Sweden seems to lag behind Canada with regards to immigrants' economic integration.
When you use the phrase "labor shortage" or "skills shortage" you're speaking in a sentence fragment. What you actually mean to say is: "There is a labor shortage at the salary level I'm willing to pay." That statement is the correct phrase; the complete sentence and the intellectually honest statement.
ReplyDeleteEmployers speak about shortages as though they represent some absolute, readily identifiable lack of desirable services. Price is rarely accorded its proper importance in their discussion.
If you start raising wages and improving working conditions, and continue doing so, you'll solve your shortage and will have people lining up around the block to work for you even if you need to have huge piles of steaming manure hand-scooped on a blazing summer afternoon.
Re: Shortage caused by employees retiring out of the workforce: With the majority of retirement accounts down about 50% or more, most people entering retirement age are working well into their sunset years. So, you won’t be getting a worker shortage anytime soon due to retirees exiting the workforce.
Okay, fine. Some specialized jobs require training and/or certification, again, the solution is higher wages and improved benefits. People will self-fund their re-education so that they can enter the industry in a work-ready state. The attractive wages, working conditions and career prospects of technology during the 1980’s and 1990’s was a prime example of people’s willingness to self-fund their own career re-education.
There is never enough of any good or service to satisfy all wants or desires. A buyer, or employer, must give up something to get something. They must pay the market price and forego whatever else he could have for the same price. The forces of supply and demand determine these prices -- and the price of a skilled workman is no exception. The buyer can take it or leave it. However, those who choose to leave it (because of lack of funds or personal preference) must not cry shortage. The good is available at the market price. All goods and services are scarce, but scarcity and shortages are by no means synonymous. Scarcity is a regrettable and unavoidable fact.
Shortages are purely a function of price. The only way in which a shortage has existed, or ever will exist, is in cases where the "going price" has been held below the market-clearing price.
Suzie, thank you for your comment!
ReplyDeleteI've never considered differentiating between scarcity and shortage in this fashion, so thank you for that insightful discrepancy.
However, I'm not sure that it entirely applies to the situation that employers in Canada commonly describe with "labour shortage". Shortage would be purely a function of price if we had politically unregulated mobility across international borders, as well as politically unregulated entrance to all occupations. We don't. And that's where the critique of the Canadian immigration comes in. There are two problems here in meeting the scarcity of qualified labourers for the positions that employers want(ed) filled during the height of this debate.
First, the highly skilled worker stream of immigration primarily awards academic degrees and gives very little for long work-life experience, with applicants topping out at 5 years already. This means that a craftsman with 30 years experience in (say) welding will get no more points for that long career than a young academic with only 5 years of work experience. In fact, he'll probably get less because the academic might very well have a higher level of theoretical education.
Secondly, trades are highly regulated. You need to have the Canadian red seal to be able to work all over the country. Immigrants obviously don't have this, so even if they were awarded more points in the highly skilled stream, they'd still have to go through a battery of tests to get these certifications. This takes a lot of time, and because of the provincial jurisdiction, this system is far from unitary across the country. Indeed, building good bridging programs to facilitate quick transistions is still a big issue.
Of course, the conundrum is that professional certification is there for a good reason: we want to know that a professional actually knows what they claim to know for safety reasons, so some form of regulation will be needed in many occupations. The trick is the facilitate the transition for the skilled immigrants, and that is very much a political matter.