Lawrence Schembri: Labour market uncertainties and monetary policy

Remarks (delivered virtually) by Mr Lawrence Schembri, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, to the Canadian Association for Business Economics, 16 November 2021.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
25 November 2021

Good afternoon. It is a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to speak to CABE again. I'm sorry I could not participate in your summer conference, so I'm thankful we were able to reschedule. I value your keen interest in the Bank of Canada's work and your thoughtful feedback.

In the past, I have tried to speak on issues of current interest to your membership, and I hope today is no different. This afternoon I'll be talking about labour market uncertainties, which have become much more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are paying closer attention to the labour market because COVID-19 has had severe and unprecedented impacts on Canadian workers. Moreover, the pandemic and related control measures had an unusual and uneven impact across sectors of our economy-and especially across workers.