Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Real Estate, Finance, Oil And Gas Earnings Soar In Canada: StatsCan

Given the slump in Canada’s job market this year, wages are holding up reasonably well, StatsCan’s latest survey of payroll hours and earnings shows.

But some parts of the economy are much stronger than others, and that’s coming through in the wage gains seen in various industries.

Real estate professionals are seeing Canada’s biggest gains, with average weekly earnings soaring 12.8 per cent over the past year, Stats Can found.

That’s not so surprising, given the fact that house prices have been rising by much more than overall inflation in many of the country’s strongest markets, such as Calgary and Toronto, and real estate agents get paid on commission.

Other areas of wage strength also fall into the not-so-surprising pile, such as salaries in mining, oil and gas jumping 10 per cent, on average, over the past year. (With commodity prices in a slump, we’ll see if those wage gains will last.)

Then there are finance and management. As recently as this spring, those sectors were seeing relatively weak wage growth. But, recent stock market slump or not, wages in these sectors are back: Management wages are up 10 per cent on the year, while earnings in the financial sector jumped 9.3 per cent.

Overall, wages in Canada grew 3.3 per cent over the past year, somewhat faster than the 2.1-per-cent rate of inflation over that period.

The next peek at the shape of Canada’s economy will come Tuesday morning, when StatsCan releases the GDP figures for July. Analysts are looking for modest growth of around 2.4 per cent, annualized, for the month.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.ca/
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