Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for the ‘Work Hours’ Category

Now I am talking about the micro-economics view of the upcoming pandemic.

I have already noticed some very interesting things that is occuring in the name of the Pandemic of ‘09:

• The Upper Canada School board has closed their school’s gyms off hours (for non school events) to slow the Flu’s progress. This is an interesting one, are they then going to lock students up next? This means community groups’ meetings and events are being cancelled or postponed.
• More folks are taking sick leave than before. Are that many folks sick right now, or is it that folks who normally would have come into work are feeling the pressure to stay home because of the Pandemic? Not sure what the answer to that question is but I view this as a positive thing, less sick people at work or at school is a very good thing.
• People are coughing into their elbows, which is very interesting to watch, but I am not sure it is very safe when you are driving. What about those folks who are doing elbow bumps instead of handshakes? Are they inadvertently passing the Virus on?
• No one is talking about how bad the economy is, because they like to argue about whether or not to get vaccinated, which is good as well. Less people talking about the economy is a good thing (right now), hopefully it won’t cause anybody to buy Canada Savings bonds (yikes).
• People are missing work and school to get vaccinated, even though they are not in a High Risk group. I have a problem with that, if there are folks who SHOULD be getting the vaccine and they aren’t that is wrong (my opinion).

Will this somehow stall the recovery? Not sure, but there may be some ramifications at the micro level with more and more folks taking sick leave.

For those following on with my saga of looking for a new job, this week is my last pay cheque from my former employer. As of September 30th I will receive my severance and officially be unemployed, which is starting to cause a little bit of apprehension on my part, the entire looking for a new career thing is frustratingly slow at times, and it is very easy to get into a “funk” thinking things are just not going to happen, but I have learned a few important things.

Networking is Key

Very few people find and land new jobs simply by applying to jobs on job boards, or in newspapers. Unless you have a killer resume, which somehow slides through every screening program, you are going to find your next job through contacts, friends, former co-workers or people you meet through those contacts.  No, you should not be walking up and down your street with a sandwich sign saying, “Looking for work!”, however, you should be talking to people in your Network about jobs and where they think there might be jobs, and who they know.

From my network, I have already got an interview at one of the companies I have targeted as a good place to work, and others are going to follow. I have also been given other contacts from these friends, so my network is expanding with new people that are going to help me find that new job.

Don’t Panic

That is good advice for many reasons right now. The whole economic condition seems to be going into the toilet these days, with stocks and such, but just like in the stock market, in job hunting, you can’t panic either. It’s good to appear interested and a little nervous at an interview, but if you show up and can’t string two sentences together without sounding like a blithering idiot, that is not going to help much.

Fear is a good motivator, but it cannot take over your thinking processes. Selling all your stock right now may not be the best thing to do (unless you are holding some very dubious stocks), suddenly making a career change, simply because you haven’t had any interviews, is also maybe not the best thing in the job hunting world.

Big decisions like changing your career need to be thought out and not simply jumped at because you think your old skill set is unusable or is not going to get you a job.

Relax, take it easy and keep a positive attitude, is all I can advise, for both your finances and for job hunters.

Michael James posted yesterday an interesting article about inheritances and how money can disappear or dissipate at least from generation to generation. I commented on it and then spoke to Michael James about it (while watching a Little League baseball game).

I see problems with what a lot of people view what money is to them and without a good understanding of what money’s value is, and what it actually means to you it is very easy to spend it without thinking about it.

The Value of Money

My eldest daughter and I have been having talks (OK monologues mostly from me) about her spending habits now that she has a part time job. I have tried to get her to understand that just because you earn money, does not mean you have to increase your spending to compensate for this (yes, I know sometimes parents should listen to their own advice too). She doesn’t seem to understand this point, or forgets it a lot, but I think I made a good point with her a couple of days back.

I still have access to her bank account, so I can see where she is spending her money (she doesn’t usually carry cash, she uses her debit card, and that is another problem, but also for another post). I saw that she had spent $6.95 at Pizza Pizza (presumably for lunch), I remembered she had worked a very long shift at her job the previous night and when I drove her home, she complained about how her feet and back hurt, so I tried to use this to explain the value of money to her.

I pointed out that, the lunch she bought and snarfed down without thinking about it, was almost an hour on her feet, scanning food in the express line at Loblaws (where her job is). Did she really think her lunch was worth the hour of standing, scanning products and listening to customers either complain or ask questions about what she was doing? I hope this helps her understand the value of money, I am not sure, but if it causes her to think, before she spends, that is all I can hope for.

I remember when I was younger, and I had a paper route, I got paid 4 cents a paper, for a paper route of 35 papers, for 6 days a week (I got paid more for Saturday paper), but at the end of it, I made about $8.40 a week and then maybe some tips from my customers. I could have easily gone to a movie every week, but luckily I was socially inept, and really cheap, because I knew how hard I worked to make that money, so I didn’t want to just blow it on the first thing I saw.

Wonder when I lost that?

How do you value money? Do you see the work that went into buying that iPOD? All comments appreciated.

Yes, Stats Canada asks the interesting question, “Is it possible to have the rate of folks employed stay the same, but the rate of unemployed folks increase?“, the answer this month is “Yes”. How? Read the article to get that explained to you.

For me there was some good news:

Employment continued to grow in professional, scientific and technical services in June (+37,000). From a year ago, employment in the industry has grown by 7.5%, an increase of 86,000 workers. The biggest contributors to this year-over-year increase have been computer design services and legal services.

Which makes an old hacker like me feel a little better these days. Unemployment now sits at 6.2% up 0.1 over last month’s figures.

The one really interesting point made was the following:

Since June 2007, average hourly wages have risen by 4.4% to $21.15. This rate of growth is double that of the most recent increase in the Consumer Price Index (+2.2%).

Wages are out stripping CPI? So how are the employers going to deal with this? Increasing prices? This is how things started in the 70’s if I remember correctly. Stay tuned, but it should be interesting to see what big Union contracts come up and what settlements come of that as well.

Have a great weekend folks.

More snow in Ottawa, seems like a broken record, but I think I have got my per use costs on my snowblower down to around $6.00 per use, but I also may have to buy another 10 litres of gas because I am running out. My guess is there is going to be much more snow coming and I am astounded we have anywhere to put the darn stuff.

Financially for the city of Ottawa it means more likely an overrun in their snow clearance budget (that they have been able to use as a “slush fund” (sorry for the pun) the past few years). This will most likely mean higher taxation coming (along with ludicrously higher water rates too).

Bank Rate Drop

In yesterday’s post I touched on an important topic about the Bank Rate Drop of 1/2% from the Bank of Canada. The rates dropping should not be a trigger for folks to go farther into debt (I am writing this as much as a mental note to myself as a commentary to my readers), just because it is cheaper to borrow money, does not mean you should borrow money. Take advantage of these cheaper rates to pay down your debt faster (if your debt has a varying interest rate).

Remember what your mother used to say, “If everyone else went out and ran up $10,000.00 in Credit Card debt, would you too?”. OK, my mother never said quite that, although I believe she did make a comment similar to that.

Budget Passes

The Liberals decided they didn’t want to have an election called on the basis of them defeating a fairly boring budget (with one very nice twist the TFSA), so they didn’t show up for the budget passing vote. Stefan Dion did so that he can claim he voted against it in the next election.

The Aging Workforce

Stats Canada published Canada’s Changing Labor Force 2006 report yesterday and it is an interesting read.

Census data also showed that the aging of Canada’s labour force continued between
2001 and 2006. In 2006, workers aged 55 and older accounted for 15.3% of the total
labour force, up from 11.7% in 2001.

Why do I care? I am heading into that area very soon, and I keep wondering what is really going to happen when all of these folks “retire”? My suspicion is they really won’t retire, they will just change careers and become part time employees or something like that. There will be a shortage of trained folks in a lot of areas, but my opinion is it won’t be as bad initially, because a lot of those folks are just going to “scale back” work, and not actually stop working.

Anyone care to throw their opinion on this interesting topic?