Untapped potential : Creating a better future for service workers

In the first project, Ontario in the Creative Age (2009), Richard Florida and I identified some of the challenges facing routine-service workers in the province. [...] This is the second joint project by the two Institutes and applies their unique perspectives on economic competitiveness and prosperity in the analysis of the growing problem of precarious employment in the service sector. [...] Focusing on Toronto as a case study, this Working Paper builds on the former work to identify the characteristics of routine-service work in the region and illustrates how the nature of these jobs and economic trends have combined to create a rise in temporary, part-time, and low-paying employment. [...] Defining precarious employment as work that is temporary, part-time, and paying below the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO), the Institutes found that the group experiencing all three of these aspects of precarious employment increased by 33 percent between 2001 and 2012 among routine-service workers in the Toronto CMA, which is faster than the overall growth of routine-service jobs. [...] Organized demonstrations, such as the Occupy Movement called attention to the structures that kept wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1 percent of the world’s population.2 CEOs and executives earned bulging salaries and bonuses, while other workers in the same firm earned minimum wage and worked part time without any hope of a permanent job or benefits.