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A Canadian province is following the lead of the Oregon and Portugal to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl and morphine. The question is whether not arresting people for possession and offering them treatment instead will make a dent in the number of drug overdoses.

(See the government’s page on why it took the action. Notice the page is translated into 15 languages.)

10,000 residents have died from overdoses since British Columbia declared drugs to be a public health emergency in 2016. Last week, the province launched a three-year experiment to decriminalize the possession of hard drugs.

The substances will still be illegal, but authorities will not arrest adults who possess them. Instead of seizing the drugs, authorities will offer a referral to health services.

Lindsey Richardson, an associate sociology professor at the University of British Columbia and researcher with the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, told the CBC:

“When we criminalize people who use drugs, we produce interactions with the criminal justice system that have negative impacts, and so that includes the actual impact of being incarcerated, but there are also social and economic impacts. It can affect people’s housing, their employment, their family, their health.”

Researchers like Richardson say we will have to wait a while to get useful data, but Oregon took a similar approach a couple of years ago, and Richardson points to Portugal, which began decriminalizing all drugs in 2000.

“[It] went from a country that had the highest level of overdose in Europe to a country with one of the lowest,” she said. “We do know there is potential for real, material change that can result from this.”

About the Oregon effort, the Cato Institute says:

In November 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, which decriminalized the possession for personal use of small amounts of all drugs, including cocaine, heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, and oxycodone. Oregon is the only U.S. state to have implemented this policy.

Minor possession in Oregon became a civil infraction on February 1, 2021; violators receive a citation and $100 fine, which can be waived by calling a hotline to screen for substance use disorder.

A year and a half later, critics call 110 ineffectual or even harmful, claiming the black market remains vibrant.

Cato’s research said since 110 did not legalize the manufacture and sale of drugs, the black market remains. But Cato points out the law was not intended to end so many arrests tied to addictions. And there are troubling statistics that may or may not have any connection to the drug law.

• Portland saw a record 88 homicides in 2021, a 54.4% increase over 2020, and local police have tied the rise to turf wars between drug gangs. But causality is unclear. Homicides increased at a greater rate, 58.3%, from 2019 to 2020.
• Drug overdose deaths in Oregon increased 39.4% the year after 110 went into effect, compared to the same period a year before, while the U.S. increased 13.8%. But overdose deaths in Oregon increased at a similar rate, 34.3%, the year before 110.
• Some assert 110 increased demand for drugs in Oregon. Evidence suggests prohibition has a minor effect on demand, largely because enforcement is difficult. However, if demand increased at all while supply remains illegal, prohibition’s harms would continue or worsen. Indeed, fentanyl has driven Oregon’s recent overdose deaths.
• 5,400 fewer people were arrested in the ten months after decriminalization compared to the same period in 2020.

A new state audit found that the millions of dollars that the state promised to funnel from its marijuana taxes to drug treatment centers and harm reduction programs has been slow to get going. The audit found:

Oregon has the second highest rate of substance use disorder in the nation and ranked 50th for access to treatment. Advocates of M110 hope it will succeed where previous recovery and treatment efforts have failed, especially when it comes to supporting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.

How can we see massive layoffs one after another and have record unemployment?

Were you surprised like me when the new jobs figures that arrived in my inbox showed the U.S. economy added more than a half million jobs in January? A blow away surprise figure — because we have seen such massive layoffs in media and in tech jobs.

In the last few days, the Labor Department reported that the number of jobs posted for each worker who is looking for a job increased. Businesses need workers. Badly. At the same time, the layoff lists include Alphabet (12,000 employees), Amazon (18,000), Meta (11,000), Twitter (4,000), Microsoft (10,000) and Salesforce (8,000).

But the Labor Department says employment increased in many areas:

Leisure and hospitality added 128,000 jobs in January, compared with an average of 89,000 jobs per month in 2022. Over the month, food services and drinking places added 99,000 jobs. Employment in leisure and hospitality remains below its pre-pandemic February 2020 level by 495,000, or 2.9 percent.

Employment in professional and business services rose by 82,000, led by gains in professional, scientific, and technical services (+41,000).

Government employment increased by 74,000 in January. Employment in state government education increased by 35,000. (Note: A big factor was the return of California university workers after a strike.)

Health care added 58,000 jobs in January. Job growth occurred in ambulatory health care services (+30,000), nursing and residential care facilities (+17,000), and hospitals  (+11,000). In 2022, health care added an average of 47,000 jobs per month.

Employment in retail trade rose by 30,000 in January, following little net growth in 2022 (an average of +7,000 per month). In January, job gains in general merchandise retailers (+16,000) and in furniture, home furnishings, electronics, and appliance retailers (+7,000).

Construction added 25,000 jobs in January, reflecting an employment gain in specialty trade contractors (+22,000). Employment in the construction industry grew by an average of 22,000 per month in 2022.

In January, transportation and warehousing added 23,000 jobs, the same as the industry’s average monthly gain in 2022. Over the month, employment in support activities for transportation increased by 7,000.

Fortune tries to make sense of the layoff figures in the background of the employment numbers:

And let’s not forget the folks leaving voluntarily because they don’t want to come into the office, hate their managers, or aren’t keen on Elon Musk’s “hardcore work” philosophy.

The effects of all of the above will be felt in the consulting, marketing, advertising, and manufacturing spaces as companies reduce spending and redirect it towards innovating in A.I.

The canary in the coal mine was reduced advertising spend and revenue. Many tech companies are funded through advertising. So, for as long as that income stream was healthy (which was especially the case in the years leading up to COVID), so was expenditure on staffing. As advertising revenue decreased last year—in part due to fears over a global recession triggered by the pandemic—it was inevitable layoffs would follow.

Apple is one exception. It strongly resisted increasing its head count in recent years and as a result doesn’t have to shrink staff numbers (although it hasn’t been immune to staff losses due to work-from-home policy changes).

Although the headlines can be startling, the layoffs won’t actually mean a whole lot for consumers. Overall, work on tech products and services is still expanding.

Maybe what we are learning is that journalists should be careful about making broad statements about the post-pandemic economy, which just underwent an abnormal but momentous jolt of federal money infusion coupled with global supply interruptions and a mega shift of worker expectations. The jobs that people are losing are way different from the workers that businesses are hiring. In today’s jumbled economy, it is possible to both have low overall unemployment and massive unemployment in some sectors. Welcome to 2023.

People are still quitting their jobs at a high rate

One key measure of the economy is the “quit rate,” which is how many workers quit their jobs to do something else, or nothing else.

The Federal Reserve says while people are quitting a little less than they did in December 2021, people are still quitting at a way higher than usual rate.

(Federal Reserve-St. Louis Fed)

The Fed is not thrilled with these numbers because, in general, people quit their jobs to take higher paying jobs. That means employers must pay more to retain workers, and that feeds inflation. Around and around, we go.

Canada welcomes a record number of immigrants … and is open to more

What a difference a border makes. Canada just announced that 2022 marked a record number of new permanent residents. Canada admitted more than 437,000 new permanent residents. The 437,000 new Canadian residents amount to 1.1% of the population.

Canadian polling shows strong support for open immigration policies. Voice of America reports:

Canada’s eagerness for new immigrants is partly driven by an acute labor shortage attributed in part to a rapidly aging population. The state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently described labor shortages as “the new normal.”

That has colored the thinking of business owners and entrepreneurs like Mylene Despres, the founder of La Station Workspace, a hub for creatives and entrepreneurs in Moncton, New Brunswick.

“I’m very happy that Canada is welcoming so many people,” Despres told VOA. “It’s what makes the country vibrant and interesting.”

That view is widely shared, according to Julie Ray, a senior consultant and managing editor for world news at the Gallup polling organization.

“Our studies just a few years ago found that Canada led the rest of the world on our Migrant Acceptance Index,” she said, noting that 95% of respondents told the organization they saw migrants living in their neighborhoods as a good thing.

What opposition to immigration exists is largely focused on frustration over rapidly rising real estate prices, which saw the cost of an average home rise more than five times between 1996 and 2021 — from $148,613 (US $198,150) to $821,564 (US $1,095,419).

New polling by Gallup finds that immigrants choose the United States as the most desirable place to move to. Canada is second. I was struck by how many people in the world would love to leave where they are to go somewhere else on the planet.

(Gallup)

The chart really affected me. I felt gratitude that I live where I live with the recognition that I did nothing except having the luck of the draw of being born here to gain the privilege of calling America home.