Experimental estimates of family weekly income for January to September 2020

Statistics Canada has undertaken a broad range of initiatives designed to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on Canadians. This research paper highlights experimental methods designed to measure the impact of the pandemic on month-by-month family income trends of Canadians long before detailed annual statistics become available. The approach integrates weekly earnings available from the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) together with information specific to government transfers including special COVID-19 benefits collected through administrative data sources and imputation. The objective is to shed light on the impact of labour market disruptions on Canadians and their families and the extent to which emergency benefits introduced by the government offset these disruptions. This paper describes the data sources used, estimation strategies employed, initial results, limitations, and potential future developments.