The average person wants a job because it provides a means in the form of wages to pay for goods and services. From the government's perspective; jobs are a means of creating goods and services needed for public consumption. The government is quite happy to pay workers to dig holes for half the day and then spend the rest of the day filling the holes again. Jobs are simply a means to end this situation, and the economy continues to thrive as long as people have money to spend on the things they need. But fortunately the government realizes that people are happier if they do work that contributes to society rather than just digging holes and then filling them back up again. The unemployment rate in a country is a strong indicator of the strength of the economy and the health of its society. If the economy is strong, anyone who wants to get a job should have no problem finding one, and therefore a low unemployment rate. A country experiencing a recession will suffer a higher unemployment rate. One reason Canada entered free trade was high expectations of increased trade volume and job creation. It's not a bad plan when you consider the flow of dollars through the Canadian economy and its implications for increasing productivity and decreasing the unemployment rate. But what actually happened when Canada entered free trade was a series of events that led the country into a period of recession. Canada reported a net loss of 138,000 manufacturing jobs and had the worst productivity rate among G7 countries. The desire to protect Canadian industry and jobs has given employers greater bargaining power regarding national programs such as unemployment insurance. Employers found employment insurance too generous and too expensive and negotiated reductions at the expense of employers. The program has also been revised to make it much more difficult to collect benefits. Essentially the revisions bring Canada's social safety net more in line with programs in the United States. But what the revisions did to Canadian employees was reduce the number of dollars in Canadian wallets and contribute to rising national poverty levels. The Canadian economy has undertaken some serious changes and redevelopments thanks to the signing of the free trade agreement..