Status of Women Committee on March 3rd, 2009

[Geoff Bowlby]

The BU ratio is a common comparison of two data points. The B stands for beneficiaries and the U stands for unemployed. As I was explaining earlier, they're different things, so the number of people who are on EI is not the same as the count of people who are unemployed. There are perceptions otherwise, but they are different things. The unemployed count is bigger than that of the number of employment insurance beneficiaries, and it always has been. For various reasons, not all unemployed people qualify for EI. The BU ratio is sometimes used to evaluate the success of the EI program. It's not our business at Statistics Canada to be doing that or assessing that program.

The beneficiary-to-unemployed count is a simple measure. One of the reasons I understand that HRSDC contracts us to run the Employment Insurance Coverage Survey is that they want to know more than just what's in the BU ratio. So the numbers I was giving your about potential eligibility and the reasons eligibility differs from men to women come from that survey, and it's that survey that provides you with a more in-depth understanding of why people don't qualify.

So I would turn to that survey to get an understanding of why there are differences in EI receipt among men and women, and I would try to stay away from the simple BU ratios.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Right.

If my understanding is correct, the EI outputs are different for men and women because the inputs are different for men and women. So we have to decide, do we change the program or do we change the inputs? Am I correct?

[Geoff Bowlby]

Yes. If you want to understand the whys, they are in that Employment Insurance Coverage Survey, where you're going to get the answers.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Yes, that's right.

So it doesn't have to do with the program. The program, according to your measurements, is equal. It's the inputs; it's the number of hours, or even the fact that there are no hours. As you said, some women are voluntarily deciding not to work, deciding to maybe raise their children, and so they're not paying into EI. But they've made that decision, and so unless there's some way to change that and to force them to go to work and pay into EI, those outcomes won't change.

Would you say that's correct?

[Geoff Bowlby]

Well, it's not my business to comment on the program itself. I really can't.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Right. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—

[Geoff Bowlby]

But I can tell you what the statistics show, which is that one of the main reasons women are less likely to be potentially eligible for EI is that they haven't paid into it.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Okay, great. Thank you very much for that.

Do I have any time left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have a minute.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'll give that to Ms. Tilly O'Neill.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

When we're comparing numbers from one year to another, or groups from one year to another, we can't always end up with a conclusion according to the numbers. What outside factors should a person consider when evaluating statistics in regards to women and unemployment? What are some issues that we can consider? You mentioned that it's about their child, that they want to stay home and look after children. Are there other ideas that would...? Is it just on their own voluntary basis that they would want to remain at home?

[Geoff Bowlby]

We always say not to look at the unemployment statistic on its own. So if you looked at that first graph alone, you would see that unemployment rates among women were lower than those among men. On the face of it, you might think, great, labour market conditions for women must be better than those for of men. But on the whole, you need to take into account other statistics. You need to be looking at the employment rate and at the earnings, the outcomes, and the nature of employment among women. That was the goal of those first four or five slides.

So if you want to know what's a good way to portray the labour market situation for men and for women, some of those key statistics are in those first five or six graphs. Unfortunately, there's no magic statistic. People look at the unemployment rate as the key indicator of the labour market. Probably it is the key, but it's not the one and only key. You should look at other things.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for coming here and presenting this information.

I want to pick up on what you were just speaking about in regard to nature of employment and labour market conditions. I'd like to mine that a little more fully.

Quite frankly, I'm troubled by the statement that women make that decision in regard to employment, because some women do not make the decision. It's something external: there's no child care, they have no support system, or they're caregiving for elderly parents. Any number of things impacts their ability to go out and seek that job.

I think it's important that when we look at unemployment rates among women and the impact of not being able to access benefits because they don't have enough hours, we need to be much broader in regard to our approach and not just say that they made a choice, because I know from many women in my community that they aren't given a choice.

I wonder if you could expand on what you were saying about labour market conditions. I want to be really clear there.

[Geoff Bowlby]

Female unemployment rates are lower than those of males. That's a key thing.

Participation in the labour market is another thing that we look at. As I was saying, unemployment on its own is not enough. You need to look at participation rates, and that's the share of the population, male or female, whatever it might be, that is active in the labour market. Your activity in the labour market reflects upon your unemployment rate, so if you're out there looking, you get counted as unemployed; if you decide not to look, you don't get counted as unemployed.

We have to make a distinction between who is unemployed and who's at home because of other reasons. You don't want to count all women who are not working as unemployed, because some are at home taking care of kids or elderly relatives or going to school. The same is true for men.

[A voice]

It's true.

[Geoff Bowlby]

We have statistics, but nothing is conclusive. We don't, at least on the Labour Force Survey, have questions that would help us understand what barriers women and men face. There are some suggestive things, but we don't ask directly, “Why are you not working?” We don't ask, “Why did you not find a job?” Other surveys show that. Those that I'm familiar with, and the Labour Force Survey in particular, don't have that question.

But here's what we do know. What I said was that participation impacts your rate of unemployment. Women are much less likely to participate in the labour market than men, the main reason being that they're at home taking care of children. For some older women that's not necessarily the case, because that was the lifestyle at the time: the man went out to work and the woman stayed at home. So it's expressed in our surveys as sort of a personal preference. That's how that comes out.

I could expand. I don't have the statistics on me, but we can show you, for example, what the share of women is who are not unemployed and what they are doing. Are they at home? Are they going to school? You can get an idea from that what it is that's keeping them at home. Labour force participation rates among women who have children under the age of five are very, very low. Well, I shouldn't say that, because they're higher than they've ever been, but they're much lower than they are among men who have children of the same age.

That's the best I can do on that question right now, but we can look into it a little bit more.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I know that labour force participation is higher in Quebec, and of course they have a child care program in place, so that's an interesting kind of correlation.

On asking the questions in regard to personal preference, do you think that sort of precludes some of the real information if it's categorized as personal preference that I didn't go out to seek employment rather than sort of digging away at some of the perhaps more accurate or real reasons why I didn't do that search?

[Geoff Bowlby]

We do have some information on reasons why women work part-time. One of the biggest categories is personal preference. I suppose it's possible with the Labour Force Survey to try to bead down and find out a little bit more about that. We just don't have the answers. We don't have the question on the questionnaire to provide you with some of the information you might like in order to have it beaded down a little further, but it's a possibility. These questionnaires are not easy to change.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

No, I'm sure, and I know that creating a questionnaire is a real science in terms of mining it for data.

I wonder, is Statistics Canada planning to collect any data on women and EI during this recession so you could say that this was a very difficult economic period, this is what was learned from it, and if so, could you say what's planned?

[Geoff Bowlby]

We don't have any plans like that. If a policy department asked us, we would collect that sort of information.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

If, for some reason, the government said that they need lots of data, more information, that would be one of the things that could quite conceivably help government do its planning and anticipate.

[Geoff Bowlby]

Yes, that's why we're here.

It wouldn't be our role to decide ourselves what those statistical priorities should be. We would hear from the policy departments, and they would ask us to do it.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Last week we had a witness who was trying to find information. He said that he had $100 and he was able to get some, but to get what he really wanted, it would cost him about $3,000. I'm wondering, in terms of these fees, is there any opportunity in terms of making information more readily available to the public so that we can get a better picture?