Unemployment in Canada

As many countries are experiencing troubled economics, including high unemployment rates, Canada is still doing well for themselves through these times. Over the past 12 months, Canada’s unemployment rate rose up 1.2% giving us a total of 7.5% unemployment. Some of the main causes of unemployment are: frictional, seasonal, structural, cyclical and just not having enough job sources provided to employers. The most normal unemployment type is frictional and the most serious is structural. Right now I’m going to talk about seasonal and youth unemployment because it’s the type that could be associated with my age group. Seasonal unemployment is caused by economic slowdowns related to seasonal changes. Great examples of seasonal businesses are Canada’s Wonderland, Halloween costume stores or ski resorts. All three of these businesses are affected once their associated season changes. Most of the employees for these businesses tend to be youths. Youths look for jobs to make quick money for the summer of whatever it is, even if it’s seasonal. The downfall about working at seasonal places is once the seasons up, those employees are left unemployed increasing Canada’s rate. According to statistics for 2011, Canada’s youth unemployment rate was 15% which is not that great but in comparison to other countries such as Spain with 44% unemployment for youth, is very good.

Youths in Canada may complain about the difficulty in landing a solid part time job, but we should count our blessings that we have more job opportunities here then different parts of the world. The most beneficial thing about Canada is that they offer help and service support to youths to try and find jobs, such as YES (Youth Employment Strategy) and other routes that help youths land a job. Unemployment rates decrease as age increases. Youths are at the bottom of the list making that the most difficult time to get a job, but once they age, there are more job opportunities provided making it easier for adults to land a full time job.

Canada Takes The Lead

Economic prosperity is generally associated to the well being and successful social status and wealth of the economy, but economic prosperity is not only within the general economy, it also lies within companies and business throughout the world. Each company can either experience prosperity or opposite, bankruptcy. In today’s time, the economy isn’t at its highest point; many countries are facing serious debts and recession that could possibly lead to depressions. Thankfully, Canada is one of the countries that’s head is still high above water. We have made good economic decisions that have kept prosperity throughout our Canadian economy, so we hopefully don’t face what countries in Europe are experiencing.

Because many countries around the world are facing difficult times, it has a huge impact on not only family but also businesses. There are companies that have hit their lowest point because of these times but one very common company that has been around for 72 years and is the largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants in the world; you guessed it, the one and only McDonalds is one company that has never seen the dark side. McDonalds is a prime example of a company who serve 64 million customers a day in 119 countries around the world, and experience continuous prosperity and growth. McDonalds has been able to manage their profits, continue to upgrade their menus, make smart decisions and leaves them right where they belong, on top. Success has never been a question for McDonalds and even through this slight rough patch, they are still able to maintain a successful and prosperous franchise.

McDonalds is a great example for other companies to look at, that just because the economy isn’t great now, doesn’t mean you can’t keep your business successful, just like Canada is a great example to other countries that we have been able to maintain a stable economy and fight our way through the gutter to still have economic prosperity.

Victoria's Secret

Victoria's Secret is one of the most famous lingerie companies worldwide. They not only sell lingerie, they also sell clothing, and have branched off another very successful clothing brand called PINK. They also have world famous Fashion Shows with their angel models. In other words, Victoria's Secret seems like a pretty accurate company. But just like most other companies, VS also experiences problems with business ethics. VS wants to promise their customers organic, cotton panties, therefore the company buys all the cotton produced in Burkina Faso, a poor, third world country. VS had a deal with Burkina Faso that the cotton harvested would be done without the use of child labour but as a result was not. Poor, desperate farmers have been using their children to harvest the cotton fields. Victoria's Secret models were urging the children to work faster, so they could feed the world hunger for lingerie. The worst part is, is that Burkina Faso is such a poor country, that the children working on the cotton farms are helping their families survive day by day, needless to say that all families working on the farms are miserable and desperate.

 The Victoria's Secret company knowing this; say that they don’t want the children working the farms, that they want their supply to be chain free of misery and yet they still haven’t made changes. Victoria's Secret is still not willing to pay extra money for the cotton to help supply basic needs to these farmers like a meal of food. It could also be beneficial to VS because the more money they spend, the more workers/farmers they would need which means supply would increase and drive the prices down. The root of the story is, is that a successful, loved company like Victoria's Secret has children working the farms to supply their cotton. Each cotton pantie that VS sells cost approximately 7-10 dollars a single pantie. With these high prices, and good success rolling in for the company, you would think that they would want to end the child labour and put more bucks to support non child labour supply. Child labour is a business ethic issue because it goes against morality. Having children work on farms ten hours a day is wrong, and yet the VS company hasn’t made any effort to help make changes and better their companies supply team.

Short-Term or Long-Term ?

          A boy graduating high school is faced with a huge decision that could change his life. Eighteen year old Eddie has always dreamed of being rich someday so he could live a luxurious lifestyle when he’s older. His mom has always wanted Eddie to go to college after high school so he could become successful one day, and for the longest time, he thought his path after high school was going to be college. Then Eddie's uncle’s friend asked Eddie if he wanted to go straight to work after graduation and work for his very large, successful company called Heat Kings. Eddie would earn $15 an hour working five days a week for six hours a day. Therefore he would be making a good income of approximately $450 a week. Eddie is very excited about this offer, because he has money on his mind so he could then do and buy things that he always wanted.

The college that Eddie was thinking of going to was Seneca. Tuition for enrollment for one year at Seneca is around $8,000 not including books and extra fees. So now Eddie is at a stump, he needs to make a decision between making a short-term decision and making money the fastest way possible, or think long-term and go to college and doing well so he could be more successful in the future. On one hand, he will lose four years of salary while he’s at school getting his degree; and on the other hand, he hopes to earn more during his career thanks to the four years of schooling.

As a result, after graduation, Eddie made the smartest and most beneficial decision to attend Seneca college for four years and achieve a business degree. He might be losing craved money now, but in the future, if all goes well, he’ll be grateful for this decision.The opportunity cost of Eddie going to school is sacrificing fast money.

General Motors, back in buisness !

General Motors aka GM went through its toughest period about a year and a half ago when they filed for bankruptcy June 1^st 2009.  GM was the biggest vehicle producer in the world in 2007, producing over 13 percent of the total and over 23 percent of the domestic sales. General Motors was able to survive the Great Depression and WWII so what made these past couple years of struggle different? There are a few different reasons for the bankruptcy including; poor management, a decrease in demand of their vehicles and increase in the price of their vehicles. One of the aspects contributing to the bankruptcy is poor management for the reason that the company was unorganized and the management skills were horrible. The demand in their vehicles went down due to the fact that their products weren’t their best quality or satisfying to consumers. The price of automobiles being jacked up because of the lack of demand for their vehicles.These were the three factors that all worked together to collapse the largest car manufacturing company in the world. General Motors not only affected the US, but the whole continent. Canada really felt the zing when GM went down because GM is what saved and gave many Canadians employment, when the company collapsed, if left several Canadian workers unemployed.

How did GM recover? To start the American and Canadian governments bailed GM out of their debt and now have ownership over the company. The American government owns roughly around 60% of the company and the Canadian government owning the other 40%. Executives say that the July sales results show its progress in managing inventories, reducing the cost on vehicles and building a better line up of advertising. GM went from having multiple brands before their down fall, to now only focusing on their four main brands; Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC. By cutting down from their multiple brands to only four, they are guaranteeing better quality,  more efficient and advanced vehicles; fixing one of the factors contributing to their bankruptcy in the first place. General motors brought down their breakeven point from 16 million to 10 million, making them debt free; which fixed another one of the main reasons to their downfall.  GM is now taking environmentally friendly initiatives by creating flexible fuel vehicles, establishing automotive battery laboratory vehicles, all electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles.

The over one hundred year old American automaker had three main reasons for its ghost period which involved lack of management skill, low demand for cars, and high prices. Well they are no longer the automakers that went bankrupt, because as of this present week Gm is back on its feet and doing very well. They fixed most of their issues and worked on improving problems they faced to make the company stronger than ever. Gm is back and blooming in the US and is also growing in Canada. General Motors knew that that needed to change their ways and fix their problems if they were ever going to resume to being the number one car manufacturing company in the world, and so they did and are doing a spectacular job so far.

Blockbusters in America go Bankrupt

To this present day, all Blockbusters in the United States have gone bankrupt. The demand to rent or buy movies and games has decreased drastically, due to many new uprising resources. One big uprising resource that contributed to it's bankruptcy is the new website 'Netflix.com', an online movie rental website. People right now are loving this new website for many reasons. It is very convenient for people in many ways; it saves them time from driving to nearby Blockbusters and it saves them money on gas, which helps the environment. Instead they can stay home and rent a movie with the help of their credit cards. Netflix.com has everything Blockbusters were offering such; every genre of movies just in a more convenient and preferred place for a reasonable price of only $7.99 a month.

Another reason Blockbuster suffered bankruptcy is because there are a variety of online websites such as Isohunt, iTunes and many more who are offering movie downloads for free. Clearly, society would rather download it themselves on a safe website than have to go and pay to rent the movie. I personally think that if Blockbuster had offered online movie rentals and downloads, they could have been saved and dodged the downfall. Blockbuster is a very well known businesss for movie rentals so they would have no problems with publicity for their business, they would just have to put together an online rental service and their demand would have stayed strong. With all these easy access and convenient online websites rising up in the popularity bar, consumers demand to rent a movie or game from Blockbuster decreased, and because Blockbuster didn't do anything to try and save their business as they saw new resources on the rise, they dug their own grave and went bankrupt. Knowing that Blockbusters were becoming scarce because of their low demand, they should have done something to bring then on the same level as their competition if not even higher.

Canadian Blockbuster companies can learn from this situation and do what they need to do to prevent this scenario for themselves, like create and online free movie rentals and downloads website. Consumer preference and demand is number one, so if you keep your customers satisfied and happy your business will live. If Canada keeps their Blockbuster prices reasonable and have deals because deals attract consumers, and create convenience for consumers, their demand will still be there. Hopefully Canadian Blockbusters will learn from their good friends and do what they need to do to remain in demand.