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Sunday, 14 August 2016

Are You Killing Our Economy Through Your Shadow Work?

Kawartha Lakes Mums Asks : How Many Jobs Did You Destroy This Week? 

Stats Canada just released a study showing that entry level jobs in Canada are few and far between. On CBC Radio podcast Spark author Craig Lambert, pointed out several ways  you and I may be at fault for the increased unemployment rates!
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What?
How could we have caused the increased unemployment rate?
This post shares some insights from the CBC Spark interview as well as links to job opportunities.
So how is the average person destroying entry level jobs?

Canadians Doing Shadow Work Destroy Entry Level Jobs 

Did you bag your own groceries, use an ATM or pump your own gas this week? Then you were engaging in Shadow work.
What is Shadow work?
According to author of Shadow Work The Unseen Unpaid Work That Fills Your Day,
Shadow work = All the unpaid work in a wage-based economy.
How is it that we started doing unpaid work?
Businesses with higher overhead costs due to increased utility bills and taxes need to cut costs somewhere. This somewhere is offloading some tasks on consumers.
Businesses sell us on the advantages of doing this unpaid work by packaging the unpaid work as convenience and offering discounts if you do it yourself.
If there were no longer line ups in a store would you use self-check out?
Lambert shared several examples of how even higher level jobs are being rapidly lost through the democratization of labour that exists because of the Internet.
Tasks that were done solely by lawyers areally now becoming DIY jobs.
So what?
Craig points out that we are not seeing what we are losing by doing shadow work.
Some losses are simply the time we could be spending with family instead of getting our own salad at the salad bar.
However, as a society as a whole,  the losses are much greater. We are losing choice. For example, if we are not able to pump our own gas due to disability , it is difficult to find a full service station.
In addition, the small individual human interactions that create community are lost when we use an ATM and scan our own purchases.
This idea of  Shadow certainly gives us a lot to ponder.
So the next time you're out shopping  will you opt to scan your own purchases or head for a cashier?
The job you save may be just what a family member needs!

Kawartha Lakes Job Listings

Here are a few Kawartha Lakes job listings we discovered:

Are you looking for work?
Drop us a comment, or connect with us in one of these ways. We love chatting with our readers!:
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