|
Abstract
|
Suicide is a rising concern during the COVID-19 pandemic (Gunnell et al., 2020). McIntyre and Lee's important research suggests that, based on evidence from Canada in 2000-2008, a 1% increase in unemployment rates is associated with a 1% increase in suicide rates (McIntyre and Lee, 2020). Given rapidly increasing unemployment rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need for evidence-based suicide prevention strategies tailored to current socio-economic conditions.1 As such, their research is very well-timed.
Our concern is McIntyre and Lee's research greatly underestimates suicides due to unemployment. Our argument is four-pronged. First, their research uses a flawed measure of unemployment to calculate suicide rates. This measure comes from Statistics Canada, where unemployed individuals are defined as "those who, during reference week, were without work, were available for work and were either on temporary layoff, had looked for work in the past four weeks or had a job to start withing the next four weeks" (Statistics Canada, 2018). This measure of unemployment fails to account for those who were employed working zero hours or those unemployed and not seeking work. As such, this measure does not represent Canadians who are currently unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic but do not fall within the labour force definition. Economists suggest taking these individuals into account would raise the unemployment rate by an additional 18.9% (Bruch and Thomas, 2020). Thus, a measure of effective unemployment would better predict expected suicide rates by accounting for individuals excluded from the narrowly defined official unemployment rate. Effective unemployment, or U6 unemployment, accounts for those who are conventionally unemployed as well as those unemployed who cannot look for work due to the pandemic.
Second, McIntyre and Lee point out a 1% increase in suicide linked with a 1% increase in unemployment. However, research specific to Canada suggests there may actually be a 2.1% increase in suicide for every 1% increase in unemployment...
Language: en |