Tuesday morning news drop
Mandatory Skills Trades Certification in BC Skilled Trades Certification means uncertified workers in selected trades will need to become certified or register as an apprentice with the Industry Training Authority (ITA) to be legally able to work in that trade. (BC Government)
The Amazon That Customers Don’t See Each year, hundreds of thousands of workers churn through a vast mechanism that hires and monitors, disciplines and fires. Amid the pandemic, the already strained system lurched. (New York Times)
Alberta's COVID-19 vaccination rates tied to levels of formal education, data shows An analysis of COVID-19 vaccination rates in Alberta suggests one socio-economic factor, in particular, is correlated to vaccine uptake. And it's not income, language or cultural barriers. (CBC)
The Most Important Thing to Know About Inflation Right Now For the past two months, the cost of living has been rising quickly. In May, the Consumer Price Index jumped 0.6 percent, faster than economists anticipated. It was the second largest monthly increase in more than a decade, just behind April’s 0.8 percent spike. (Slate)
The Green Revolution Is Being Built on a Very Dirty Industry: The battle against climate change is relying on the same polluting building block that drove the second Industrial Revolution a century and a half ago: Steel (Bloomberg)
Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles A race is on to produce lithium in the United States, but competing projects are taking very different approaches to extracting the vital raw material. Some might not be very green. (New York Times)
Winners and Losers of the Work-From-Home Revolution High-income workers at highly profitable companies will benefit greatly. Downtown landlords won’t. (The Atlantic)
Renting Is Cheaper Than Buying, Almost Everywhere The choice, however, is almost always about money, and in today’s hot seller’s market, a lack of available homes and skyrocketing prices have stymied many aspiring buyers. The flip side has been falling rents, especially in cities, where landlords struggle to fill record numbers of vacant apartments by offering rent cuts and concessions. Although rents show signs of recovering, it’s still a good time to sign a lease. (New York Times)
Insights from the VREB Buyer Survey Outside of the usual data on prices, sales, and inventory, the VREB also surveys buyers’ agents after each sale to collect some information about the buyer. Outside of a few missed months during the pandemic, we have about 10 years of data from those surveys now available.(House Hunt Victoria)
