TABLE 19

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE BY AGE AND GENDER
1975 - 1985

% of each group in the labor force that is not employed

* Statistics Canada. The Labor Force, February 1975 and 1985. Based on a sample of 52,800 households.

Unemployment rate is calculated as the % of those who are in the labor force (i.e., employed or unemployed but actively seeking work) who are unemployed. This figure does not include those who may have given up looking due to the scarcity of available jobs.

FIGURES 18, 19 and 20 indicate the effect of education on trends in employment and unemployment in Canada from 1965 to 1985. Note that:

• Labor force participation has increased by 23 percentage points (from 47% to 70%) among people who have some post-secondary education, by 20 percentage points (from 34% to 54%) among those with some high school education but by only 4 percentage points (from 21% to 25%) among those who have less than a Grade 9 education (FIGURE 18) .
  
  
• During the 1965 to 1985 time period, unemployment increased from 6% to 16% for those with less than Grade 9 education, from 4% to 13% for those with Grade 9-13 education, but from near 0 to 8% among those with higher than Grade 13 educational attainment (FIGURE 19).
  
  
• The net effect of these trends on women is that women with less than Grade 9 education are no more likely to be employed now than they were in 1965 (21% in each case [FIGURE 20] ). It appears that poorly educated women and men have fewer and fewer opportunities to find employment.
  
  Although women with less than Grade 9 education now constitute an older sample than did comparably educated women in 1965, the overall workforce participation of older women in total has increased (TABLES 15 and 16). Thus, their age only partially accounts for their rate of unemployment. It is likely that participation increases occurred for better educated older women, while women with less education continued to find it as difficult to get a job in the 1980's as they did in the 1960's.
  
  
• Further, employment opportunities are declining even for those who have completed some or all of their high school education. Growth in the rate of employment has been almost at a standstill since 1976 (i.e., 43% of those with Grade 9-13 education were employed in 1976 and 46% of this group were employed in 1985 (FIGURE 20).
  
  
• The only women whose rate of employment continued to increase throughout the Decade were those with post-secondary education.