The analysis of labour markets in canadian sociology

In this article I focus on four major concerns in Canadian sociological analyses of the labour market: (1) the distribution of employment of varying quality among different groups; (2) aggregate trends in the quality of employment and the incidence of unemployment often associated with globalization and technological change; (3) the effects of the relative dependence of the economy on resource extraction; and (4) various comparisons of Canadian labour market performance with that of Sweden, usually to the disadvantage of the former. I argue that these concerns have generated useful research, to varying degrees, but have tended to produce needlessly pessimistic conclusions.