The COVID-19 pandemic and gross domestic product per capita growth in Canada

The COVID-19 Pandemic has been affecting Canadians’ daily lives since the second quarter of 2020. Production and employment were cut back largely at the beginning in order to slow the spread of this contagious disease, leading to a sharp decline in income and a rise in the unemployment rate. GDP per capita of a country is often used for assessing the standard of living and its cross-country comparisons. Since 2020, Canada’s per capita GDP has averaged -1.3% per year, down from its long-term annual average of 1.2% from 1981 to 2019 and from 1.0% per year from 2010 to 2019. For a better understanding of the sources of Canada’s per capita GDP growth, this article decomposes GDP per capita into labour productivity, work intensity, employment rate, participation rate, and the share of working population. The contributions of these 5 ratios to Canada’s per capita GDP growth are examined.