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The new and re-entrants (NEREs) represent about 26 percent of all workers with a job separation (see Table 1, row 1) — a very significant proportion of this population which makes the study of their experiences with the Unemployment Insurance (UI)/Employment Insurance (EI) system important to consider. The percentage of job separators that are NEREs are shown for the three periods defined by the time of the job separation, namely, prior to July 1996, July-December 1996, and January-December 1997, which correspond to the timing of key changes from UI to EI.⁶ NEREs constitute 18.9 percent of all regular benefits claimants, and 16.5 percent of those receiving UI benefits (as the result of claims established in the 5 weeks following their sample job separation).

We focus on analyzing the characteristics of NERE workers. There is little information, both in terms of the incidence of NERE status for all workers with a job separation (see Table 2) and in terms of the composition of the NERE population (see Table 3). Since, as discussed in some detail above, the policy change has not yet affected who is defined as a NERE, we focus on the first columns of Tables 2 and 3 which refer to a worker with a job separation prior to July 1996 (though this choice does not affect the story to be told).

Table 2 presents estimates of the incidence, or likelihood, of being a NERE. That is, we calculated the percentage of all workers with job separation who are NEREs, for various significant sub-populations (e.g., men versus women, younger versus older workers).

Not surprisingly, the incidence of being a NERE is much higher among younger workers, since young workers are more likely to be entering the labour market for the first time than older workers; for example, the percentage of job separators aged 15-24 years who are NEREs is 51.8 percent, compared to 22.0 percent for the age group 25-34 years. Workers with lower hourly wages in their sample Record of Employment (ROE) jobs are much more likely than others to be NEREs (e.g., 41.9 percent for those with hourly wages less than $7.00 per hour) and individuals from families with lower annual incomes are more likely to be NEREs (e.g., 33.7 percent of separators from families with total incomes⁷ less than $20,000 are NEREs as compared to only 19.0 percent of those from families with total incomes of $50,000+). Since younger workers are also more likely to have lower wages and lower family incomes, these are presumably connected issues.

The incidence of being a NERE is slightly higher for women than for men, 28.2 and 24.7 percent, respectively. This result presumably reflects the greater tendency for women, compared to men, to periodically leave and re-enter the labour force, as a strategy of balancing family and work responsibilities. In fact, if we look at separators who are parents versus those who are not, we find the incidence of being a NERE to be higher for those with no children (less than 18 years of age⁸) at home than for those with children at home; the percentages are 29.7 and 19.3 , respectively. This result is presumably due to the fact that many new entrants are younger workers who have not yet had children, something which must be sorted out through multivariate analysis. We also compared all separators who are parents with parents whose youngest child is aged 6 to 10 years. We are looking here in particular for mothers who have temporarily left the labour force to care for pre-school children and who then re-enter as the children reach school age. Unfortunately, we do not have a better way of identifying this group than by the age of their youngest child. There is no difference between all fathers and fathers with a youngest child aged 6 to 10 years in the probability of being NEREs. However, for either married or single mothers, there is a marked increase in the probability of being a NERE for those with a youngest child aged 6 to 10 years compared to all mothers (e.g., from 21.9 percent for all married mothers to 31.2 percent for married mothers with a youngest child aged 6 to 10 years). Notice, single mothers are in general much more likely to be NEREs than either married mothers or fathers (e.g., 41.8 percent for single mothers with a youngest child aged 6 to 10 years, versus 31.2 percent for married mothers and 14.2 percent for fathers in the same category).

In terms of education, having a high school diploma or a university degree is associated with a higher incidence of being a NERE, compared to having less than high school or a non-university credential. Again, it is likely that there is a connection between the level of education completed and the age of the worker which cannot be sorted out through a simple descriptive analysis (i.e., many younger workers may still be engaged in education).

Table 3 presents estimates of the composition of the NERE population and provides another way to analyze the characteristics of the NERE population. As for Table 2, we focus only on the first column. NEREs are most likely to be young; 40 percent of NEREs are between the ages of 15 and 24 years. NEREs are roughly split between men and women, as 52 percent of NEREs are men and 48 percent are women. A greater percentage of NEREs are single compared to married, 65.1 and 34.9 percent, respectively. The vast majority of NEREs are childless (76.1 percent). Thus, returning mothers do not constitute a large part of the total NERE population, despite relative high probabilities of being NEREs if they have job separation.

Given the distribution of the population, not surprisingly most of the NEREs reside in Quebec and Ontario, 22.9 and 38.1 percent respectively. Of the NEREs with children, 42 percent had children less than 5 years of age. In terms of education, almost 70 percent of NEREs had a high school diploma or less (53.0 plus 17.8 percent). In terms of hourly wage rates, over 50 percent of NEREs earned wages less than $10.00 (16.2 plus 39.1 percent) and over 75 percent of NEREs earned wages less than $15.00.

Footnotes

6	We report results using this division of the sample, according to the policy regime in place at the time of the job separation, throughout the paper. While not particularly relevant at the NERE identification stage, the divisions are very important later for understanding the implications of the policy changes for access to benefits.
7	The Canadian Out of Employment Panel (COEP) survey asks respondents their total household income in the 4-week period preceding the interview. They are also asked if this is an increase or decrease from their total household income in the 4 weeks preceding the sample job separation. If there was a change, they are asked how much. We used this information to calculate household income in the 4 weeks preceding the sample ROE and then multiplied this figure by 13 to obtain an estimate of annual income.
8	Number of children is at the time of the survey, rather than at the time of the job separation. There can be up to a one-year difference, so family status could have changed (e.g., through birth of a child, divorce/separation).