The July Jobs Report

Reviews

This is a classic Uncle Block piece - META AI

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The post satirically proposes managing panhandlers at local Hamilton intersections (e.g., James & Mohawk), renting out wheelchairs, using mobile debit terminals, or renting chicken costumes to rebrand panhandling as "street entertainment." - GEMINI AI

The July 2026 jobs report claims that employment increased by more than 75,000 jobs. But Chris Baker points out that an amazing 44,000 of these jobs represent "self-employment."

Baker has done some interesting analysis of the recent Canada jobs report. I think he is on to something. And it gave me some ideas to kick around.

One of the smartest entrepreneurial initiatives I have seen involves self-employed individuals fabricating signs out of cardboard and standing in the dividers at busy intersections. This can be thought of as an excellent first step for anyone climbing the entrepreneurial ladder since it requires zero capital, no schooling or licensing, and compliance with the Income Tax Act is, as they say, voluntary.

If standing on a traffic island with a carboard sign can be considered a form of 'employment' these days it opens the possibility of other opportunities. Displaying a carboard sign for hours on end for a couple of hundred bucks is small potatoes for a big thinker like me. I would buy a used accessible taxi and some used wheelchairs. Then I would provide a service to a crew of homeless people and drive them to various intersections, like James and Mohawk, or Centennial and Queenston, for a fare equivalent to the statutory cab fare. In addition, I would charge a reasonable price for wheelchair rental. Cash up front. I would not hire anyone on an hourly or commission basis because I wouldn't trust them to report their earnings honestly. If the business takes off, I would consider equipping my gig workers with Moneris debit machines. For an additional fee. Cash up front. Plus a deposit on the machine.

Oh! And that gives me another idea. I could invest in some chicken costumes to rent to the staff. If they were to dance around a bit, elbows up style, then they wouldn't be strictly begging. They would be providing entertainment. That might increase donations from Liberals. (Who am I kidding? Liberals are only generous with other people's money.)

That reminds me of the time a cab driver I knew parked his cab on Haymarket St., behind the GO station in the hope of snagging a fare coming up the stairs from the rear of the station, instead of exiting at the front of the station where the legal cab stand stood. He decided to supplement his earnings there by panhandling. When queried about his activity by a GO constable, he replied, "I can't make enough money driving a cab, so I had to take on a second job." I heard that when the taxi boss caught wind of this he hit the roof and suspended that driver for two weeks. Back then, the thought of calling panhandling a "second job," sounded ridiculous, but not anymore.

Heck. While we're at it, why not also include drug dealing, fraud, and other crimes, like jewelry store smash-and-grabs as a form of employment?

A few decades ago there was a movement to consider housework as a form of employment. (See my essay from over twenty-five years ago - The Wages for Housework Campaign - Time to reformulate our understanding?)

If we were to grant a degree of legitimacy to the Wages for Housework Campaign idea, it opens up a whole panoply of activities that people could call, 'jobs.' I changed my tire last Wednesday, so I guess I could argue that I was 'employed.' If you're planning on doing some fishing this summer, you could call that a job, I suppose, if you bring the carp home and eat them.

Maybe I could find a field somewhere and start digging holes and filling them back in again. Some might disqualify that as a real job because it accomplishes nothing that anyone would voluntarily pay me to do. Then again, we can look to Carney's baby, the Pathways Project as another perfect example of $16.5 billion being invested in a scheme that also accomplishes nothing. People will be employed, and Carney's cronies will rake in the cash from their carbon credits scam, but it won't accomplish climate stasis, and the average tax payer will derive absolutely zero benefit from it. Even less than zero as those carbon credits form part of the price they pay for all goods and services. The Carney crony lucre has to come from somewhere.

That project reminds me of this machine...

I have a sneaking suspicion that a good chunk of the 44,000 "self-employed" jobs number is Uber drivers and food delivery guys. Curiously, Brave search reports that the number of Toronto rideshare drivers has dropped from 80,000 in 2025 to about 70,000 today. That aside, if the total demand for taxi rides doesn't change much over the short term, as additional drivers enter the field, the earnings of each driver is reduced proportionately. So while there may be an increase in 'jobs,' there is no corresponding increase in aggregate earnings nor in work done. Therefore, each "enterpreneur" makes less.

Also worth noting is, as demand for taxi rides declines during a recession, desperate job seekers resort to taxi driving to get by, thus producing a double whammy. Likewise for food deliveries.

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I thought my essay was rather funny. Then I ran it by Google's Gemini. I thought their response was even funnier. How dare they call my entrepreneurial ideas 'absurd.' This is what Gemini says about my essay:

Here is an analysis of the blog post **"The July Jobs Report"** published on *Open Prison Canada* (August 10, 2026):
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### 1. Core Premise & Primary Data Point

The article opens with headline figures from Canada's July 2026 labor force data:

* **Headline Claim:** Total employment grew by over **75,000 jobs**.

* **Critique (via Chris Baker):** **44,000** (nearly 60%) of those reported gains were in **self-employment** rather than traditional wage or salary employment.
The author uses this disparity to argue that headline employment figures can be misleading indicators of economic health.

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### 2. Main Economic Arguments

* **Quality vs. Quantity of Jobs:** High self-employment growth in a weak economy often signals gig-economy saturation or informal survival strategies rather than organic business expansion or rising demand.
* **The Gig Economy & Income Dilution:** The post focuses on rideshare and food delivery drivers (e.g., Uber). The author notes that when more people enter a gig market where aggregate consumer demand is stagnant or falling, individual worker earnings drop even though official "job count" statistics increase.
* **Measurement & Definition of "Work":** The author questions what actually constitutes a "job" in official statistics, arguing that counting low-margin, desperate self-employment under state labor metrics obscures underemployment and economic stress.

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### 3. Satirical & Rhetorical Framing

To drive home the argument about expanding definitions of employment, the author relies heavily on hyperbole and local Hamilton anecdotes:

* **Absurd "Entrepreneurial" Schemes:**

The post satirically proposes managing panhandlers at local Hamilton intersections (e.g., James & Mohawk), renting out wheelchairs, using mobile debit terminals, or renting chicken costumes to rebrand panhandling as "street entertainment."

* **Personal Anecdote:** Recalls a former Hamilton cab driver who panhandled behind the GO station and defended it to police as taking on a "second job."

* **Reductio ad Absurdum:** Questions whether unpaid domestic tasks (e.g., changing a tire, fishing for food) or illicit activities (drug dealing, theft) could similarly be counted as employment if informal income-generating or labor activities are treated as valid metrics.

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### 4. Broader Political & Institutional Commentary

Beyond labor statistics, the author incorporates broader conservative/libertarian-leaning critiques:

* **Government Programs & Productivity:** Compares non-productive labor to major government-backed capital initiatives (referencing Mark Carney and the Pathways Project), alleging that large investments in carbon offset schemes fail to deliver tangible economic value to taxpayers.

* **Partisan Context:** Expresses skepticism toward federal Liberal economic policy, framing government labor reporting and spending as performative rather than productive.

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### Summary Takeaway

The post is a **satirical commentary on labor market indicators**, using a specific statistical discrepancy (44,000 out of 75,000 jobs being self-employed) to argue that official employment figures disguise underemployment, gig-work saturation, and economic stagnation in Canada.

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A Meta AI Review

analyze this: https://uncleblock.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-july-jobs-report.html

This is a classic Uncle Block piece - part labour market analysis, part Hamilton street-level satire, part reductio ad absurdum. Here's what's actually going on in it:

## 1. The core claim you're making

Headline StatsCan number: **+75,000+ jobs in July 2026.** Your hook, via Chris Baker: **44,000 of those are self-employment** - about 58% of the gain.

Your argument: when that much of the gain is self-employment in a weak economy, the headline is misleading. It's not new demand creating productive jobs, it's people creating their own low-margin work to survive.

You embedded Gemini's summary of your own post inside the post, which then summarizes it back as:

> Quality vs Quantity of jobs, gig saturation + income dilution, and what counts as a "job" at all.

That self-referential loop is actually the thesis.

## 2. Does the data pattern check out?

StatsCan's Labour Force Survey is notoriously noisy month-to-month. For context:

* July 2025: Canada *lost* 40,800 jobs after gaining 83,100 in June * Other months in 2025-26: reporting often notes "self-employment was little changed" when full-time wage work does the heavy lifting

So a month where 44k / 75k is self-employed *would* be an outlier, and worth flagging. Historically, spikes in self-employment during downturns are a well-documented pattern - people enter Uber, food delivery, odd jobs when wage hiring stalls. It doesn't increase total rides or deliveries, it just splits the same pie thinner.

Your note about Toronto rideshare drivers dropping from 80k to 70k via Brave search - I couldn't verify that in official StatCan/ City data. The logic you draw from it is right though: if demand is flat, more drivers = lower earnings per driver, even while the "job count" goes up.

## 3. The economic mechanics you're nailing

This is the strongest part, and you get it right in plain language:

**Income dilution:** In gig markets where aggregate demand is relatively fixed short-term, entry doesn't create new output. Official employment rises, aggregate earnings and hours worked do not.

**Counter-cyclical self-employment:** In a recession, taxi/delivery is a fallback. So you can get both falling demand *and* rising supply of drivers - a double whammy on earnings.

That's not just satire, that's textbook labour economics for informal/gig work.

## 4. How the satire works

You use three devices:

**a) The entrepreneurial ladder inversion:** You start with the real Hamilton sight - people with cardboard signs on traffic islands (James and Mohawk, Centennial and Queenston) - and treat it as "zero capital, no licensing, voluntary tax compliance" startup. Then you escalate it logically: fleet management, wheelchair rental, Moneris debit machines with deposit, chicken costumes as "entertainment" to reclassify panhandling.

It's Swiftian - you take StatsCan's broad definition and push it until it breaks.

**b) Local anecdote as proof:** The GO station story - driver panhandling behind Hamilton GO on Haymarket St. and telling the constable it's his "second job." That used to sound absurd, now it maps directly onto how self-employment is counted.

**c) Reductio ad absurdum:** If cardboard signs count, why not tire-changing for yourself, fishing for carp, digging and refilling holes, or drug dealing and smash-and-grabs? You link it to the old Wages for Housework debate from your 25-year-old essay, which is a clever callback - that movement *did* argue housework should be counted as employment, which forces the question of where you draw the line.

## 5. The Pathways detour

You compare digging holes and filling them back in to the Pathways Project. For context, that is the C$16.5 billion Pathways Alliance carbon capture network in the oil sands that the federal government and Alberta have been negotiating cost-sharing on.

Your critique is: public money, private crony benefit via carbon credits, no tangible benefit to the taxpayer. Whether you agree or not, rhetorically it serves as your example of *officially* productive but *economically* useless work - the mirror image of the informal work you're saying shouldn't count.

## 6. Where the argument stretches

If you want to tighten it for a skeptical reader:

1. **StatsCan definition:** Self-employed in LFS means you worked in your own business/farm/professional practice in the reference week, with or without employees. Panhandling, by itself, does *not* count. Neither does illicit work. So the satire is directionally right about measurement issues, but literally, StatsCan isn't counting the sign guys. 2. **Self-employment isn't always bad.** In a strong market it's often incorporation, consultants, trades. You could pre-empt the counterargument by noting the *context* matters - share of full-time vs part-time, incorporation, employees vs solo. 3. **The wheelchair / Moneris bit** is the edgiest. It lands as satire of exploitation, but some readers will read it as punching down at homeless people rather than up at the statistical system. You keep it clearly framed as *you* as the absurd rent-seeking middleman, which helps, but it's the line where the humor is riskiest.

Uncle Block responds:

When I decided to include the wheelchair device it was not intended as a punch-down at homeless people. I got the idea from my son who happens to be a self-employed busker. He had a favourite spot in front of a certain grocery store on the mountain. Whenever I drove by that store, he would be stretching his neck to get a view of the front entrance.

One day, my curiosity to ask him what the heck he was looking for. He explained, "I am looking to see if the guy with no legs is there. Whenever he's there, I don't make any money." Ergo, the idea of employing wheelchairs to get people to open their wallets.

## 7. The Gemini meta-layer

Ending with "I thought my essay was rather funny. Then I ran it by Google's Gemini... How dare they call my entrepreneurial ideas 'absurd'" - and then pasting Gemini's straight-faced academic summary plus the unrelated Chicken Dancers Liberal video - does two things:

* It shows the AI missing the joke entirely and analyzing absurd proposals as "Absurd 'Entrepreneurial' Schemes" * It lets you have the last word by including the video that Gemini would never include

It's a good bit. You're demonstrating exactly what you critique in the jobs report: a system that categorizes without understanding.

If you wanted to push this piece further, one data add would make it bulletproof: pull the StatCan Table 14-10-0027 breakdown for July - employees vs self-employed, incorporated with employees vs solo unincorporated. If that 44k is mostly solo unincorporated with no employees, your dilution argument becomes unassailable.

Want me to pull the actual July 2026 Daily release from StatCan when it posts and compare your 44k number to the official table?

I tried to pull the official StatCan Daily for July 2026 - it's supposed to be **Labour Force Survey, July 2026** released August 7. StatCan's site is blocking direct scraping right now, so I can't get the primary table text, but we have the secondary reporting that dropped Aug 8-10.

Here's what the official release says via those secondaries, vs what your post says:

### What your post claimed * **+75,000+ total jobs** in July, with **44,000 being self-employment** ( ~58% ) - via Chris Baker * Implication: weak headline hiding gig-economy survival work

### What StatCan and the wrap-ups are actually reporting for July 2026

* **Unemployment rate fell for the third consecutive month to 6.4%** in July 2026 * **Ontario +52,000** - led country, third time in four months. "In all, the province has added 119,000 jobs since April." * **BC +18,000** continuing May trend * **Manitoba +5,900, Nova Scotia +4,600** * **Quebec little changed, Alberta held steady** * StatCan's key indicators bar also shows **6.4% for July 2026, -0.1 pts monthly**

If you add up ON 52k + BC 18k + MB 5.9k + NS 4.6k you get ~80k, so a net +75k total after small declines elsewhere is completely plausible. That matches your headline.

**The 44k self-employed piece:** I cannot find that breakdown in the open web yet. The June Daily explicitly said something very different:

> "The number of public sector employees declined by 31,000... employment edged up among private sector employees (+32,000)... Overall employment growth in the 12 months to June... was concentrated among private sector employees... Over the same period, there was little change in the number of public sector employees and self-employed workers."

So June was *not* self-employment led. If July flipped to 44k self-employed, that *would* be a sharp regime change - which is exactly why Baker flagged it and why your satire hits.

How to verify it when StatCan unblocks:

1. Go to **Table 14-10-0287-01** - Labour force characteristics by class of worker 2. Look at July 2026 seasonally adjusted, monthly change: - Employees (public + private) vs Self-employed - Then break self-employed into: incorporated with employees / without employees / unincorporated

If that 44k is mostly *unincorporated without employees* - solo gig workers - then your income-dilution argument is dead on. If it's incorporated with employees, it's a different story.

What we *do* know from history: StatCan itself has written about this cycle before - their study "Self-employment in the downturn" notes they track entry into self-employment specifically during downturns using LFS and SLID. So your point is not new to them.

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It seems my enterprenurial idea is not new.

Chicken Dancers

Liberal Party released this video on Facebook but not on X because they knew the internet would ROAST them

Their volunteers are all brain-dead CBC addicted boomers doing the door knocking

There is no youth in this party

That's why this video was only posted on Facebook lol pic.twitter.com/Hya2Heiz9o

— The Pleb 🇨🇦 (@truckdriverpleb) August 10, 2026