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This paper starts from the definition that "structural unemployment occurs when workers are unable to fill available jobs because they lack the skills, do not live where jobs are available, or are unwilling to work at the wage rate offered in the market." This implies that the number of vacancies in the Canadian labour market is an upper bound to the extent of "structural unemployment". The paper summarizes available estimates of the vacancy rate in Canada. In the high technology sector, vacancies may be equivalent to 2.2% of the labour force but evidence from more representative surveys indicates a range of 0.43% to 0.75% for the economy as a whole. Although during the 1980s the outward shift in the relationship between the Help-Wanted Index and the unemployment rate raised concerns that structural unemployment was an increasing problem in Canada, that shift has been reversed in the 1990s.

North American transportation in figures provides a comprehensive set of comparable statistical indicators of the use, performance and impact of transportation in North America. It includes over 90 different data tables, supported by figures, maps and extensive technical documentation describing data categories and definitions relating to each country, that is, Canada, Mexico and the United States. The report covers a wide variety of transportation subjects across the three countries: including transportation and the economy; safety; merchandise trade; freight activity; passenger travel; infrastructure; and transportation energy and environment.

The Guide to health statistics leads to health-related information with links to vital statistics such as births, deaths, marriages and divorces, to cancer statistics, health determinants, health status, health care, smoking and tobacco use and more. There is also information on cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys from the Canadian Community Health Survey and the National Population Health Survey.

This user's guide has been developed by Health Statistics Division to facilitate access on health information at Statistics Canada. It includes information with links to products and programs from Health Statistics Division, other divisions at Statistics Canada and other health related programs outside Statistics Canada.

The publication provides principal statistics of the logging industry including number of establishments, number of employees, salaries and wages, cost of fuel and electricity, cost of materials, value of shipments and value added. It also presents commodity detail by province on inputs and outputs and estimates of total forest production, by products and by province. A data analysis, definitions and notes, a bibliography and a list of establishments by province are also included.

The first survey of innovation, advanced technologies and practices in the Canadian construction sector was recently conducted. Of the five types of technologies listed in the survey, communications technologies have the highest percentage of use (46% of businesses). Of all the techonolgies, three computer-related technologies had the highest percentage of use : e-mail (38%), company computer networks (25%) and computer aided design (23%). The three advanced practices with the largest percentage of business using them, each with one third of businesses, are: design-build contracts, computerized inventory control and computerized estimating software.

The growing trend towards a knowledge-based economy has impacted the way research is funded and performed in Canadian universities. As higher quality estimates of R&D activities by this sector are of increasing importance to policy makers, Statistics Canada has begun substantial revisions to the methods for calculating estimates for higher education R&D. The implementation of this plan will provide substantially improved estimates of both dollar values and personnel counts for this sector.

Although universities and federal government departments have unique mandates, both are striving to promote applied research. Recent surveys finally provide a basis for comparison. In 1999, universities reported over 1,800 active patents with royalties approaching $19 million. Federal governments departments had almost 2,000 patents generating $12 million in royalties.

Why do innovation surveys produce radically different estimates of the number of R&D performers than R&D surveys? The factors contributing to divergence are presented with detail on selected contributors.

Given the high cost of R&D, adopting the correct strategies and mix of products is required for success for Canadian biotechnology firms. A recent survey examined the rapid growth of 30 companies. Fast-growing enterprises adopted a strategy of patenting their products, avoiding major production delays, targeting export markets, accessing venture capital, conducting key alliances, and planning the IPO.

Technological change and innovations depend greatly on R&D activities and investments. R&D is concentrated around the "core firms" that are responsible for 87% of expenditures. Biotechnology R&D performers accounted for $904 million of R&D expenditure. Biotechnology R&D is concentrated in large firms with 75% of R&D occuring in firms with 100 or more employees. Almost 77% of funding sources for R&D in biotechnology came from the private sector and 21% from foreign sources.

The third edition of Canadian culture in perspective: a statistical overview, provides a comprehensive statistical portrait of the health and vitality of cultural activities and industries in Canada. This compendium incorporates data from all surveys in Statistics Canada's Culture Statistics Program, as well as data from other internal and external sources, enabling readers to track various themes and trends over time.

This edition contains sections on: the economic impact of the culture sector, culture activities by tourists and the international trade position of the culture sector; on social dimensions of culture, including characteristics of the cultural labour force, philanthropic behaviour, and the consumers of cultural goods and services; and on various sectors such as heritage, the performing arts and festivals, visual arts and libraries. It also explores ownership and content issues in the culture industries (publishing, film, broadcasting and music).

Canada's ports handled a record 382.0 million tonnes (Mt.) of cargo in 1999 and a record of 2.2 million TEURS (twenty-foot-equivalent units) of containers.

Third quarter 1999 operating ratios for top carriers improved by one point over the same period one year earlier to 0.93 but were unchanged in the fourth quarter (0.94). Average revenue per carrier grew by 3% in the third quarter and 4% in the fourth quarter.

Retirement issues have risen to the forefront of socio-economic debate in Canada through the nineties and will likely gain importance as we enter the new millennium. Employer pension plans are one of the primary programs in place to provide workers with income after retirement.

Pension plans in Canada: statistical highlights and key tables presents information on the terms, conditions and membership on all employers sponsored pension plans in Canada. This supplement to publication Pension plans in Canada (74-401-XIB) provides analysis and data on registered pension plans. The topics covered include province of employment, labour force/paid workers coverage, type of plan (defined benefit and defined contributions), size of plan, public and private sectors, contributory and non-contributory plans, employee and employer contributions.

This publication presents current and constant price estimates of provincial gross domestic product (GDP) for over 50 industries covering the entire Canadian economy, including aggregates and special industry groupings. The document also includes a comprehensive analytical review of the economy of each province and territory with summary text, tables and charts.

The Vancouver-San Francisco market experienced the largest year-over-year increase in passengers of all the major markets between 1997 and 1998. Toronto-Milwaukee was the mid-sized market which experienced the largest year-over-year increase, with 25,520 more passengers in 1998 than 1997.

The volume of air travel between the Canadian cities and American states presented in Text Table 2.1 generally reflects the underlying large inter-city markets.

The Canada-United States Open Skies Agreement, which was signed on February 24 1995, transformed the regulatory environment for air services between two countries. Text Table 3.1 shows the changes in the level of travel between the U.S. and the eight most-frequented Canadian cities since 1995.

Scheduled air trips to or from Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta represented a greater proportion of total Canada-United States air travel than residents of these provinces represented of the total Canadian population. Alberta residents represented 9.6% of Canada's total population in 1998, while Alberta represented 11.8% of the total number of Canada-U.S. air travellers. Even more markedly, the populations of Ontario and British Columbia represented 37.7% and 13.2% respectively of the total Canadian population, while Ontario represented 44.4% of total Canada-U.S. travelers and British Columbia represented 20.8%.

North American transportation in figures provides a comprehensive set of comparable statistical indicators of the use, performance and impact of transportation in North America. It includes over 90 different data tables, supported by figures, maps and extensive technical documentation describing data categories and definitions relating to each country, that is, Canada, Mexico and the United States. The report covers a wide variety of transportation subjects across the three countries: including transportation and the economy; safety; merchandise trade; freight activity; passenger travel; infrastructure; and transportation energy and environment.

Richard Platek, the founding Chairman, who remained at the helm of the Journal until 1987, has provided an excellent overview of the gradual evolution of the Journal from a modest divisional to a respected departmental publication and then to an international publication of repute.

Dr. Fellegi considers the challenges facing government statistical agencies and strategies to prepare for these challenges. He first describes the environment of changing information needs and the social, economic and technological developments driving this change. He goes on to describe both internal and external elements of a strategy to meet these evolving needs. Internally, a flexible capacity for survey taking and information gathering must be developed. Externally, contacts must be developed to ensure continuing relevance of statistical programs while maintaining non-political objectivity.

Leslie Kish describes the challenges and opportunities of combining data from surveys of different populations. Examples include multinational surveys where the data from surveys of several countries are combined for comparison and analysis, as well as cumulated periodic surveys of the "same" population. He also compares and contrasts the combining of surveys with the combining of experiments.

In 1999 Statistics Sweden outlined a proposal for improved quality within the European Statistical System (ESS). The ESS comprises Eurostat and National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) associated with Eurostat. ... Basically Statistics Sweden proposed the creation of a LEG [Leadership Expert Group] on Quality].

In his paper Fritz Scheuren considers the possible uses of administrative records to enhance and improve population censuses. After reviewing previous uses of administrative records in an international context, he puts forward several proposals for research and development towards increased use of administrative records in the American statistical system.

Godambe and Thompson consider the problem of confidence intervals in survey sampling. They first review the use of estimating functions to obtain model robust pivotal quantities and associated confidence intervals, and then discuss the adaptation of this approach to the survey sampling context. Details are worked out for some more specific types of models, and an empirical comparison of this approach with more conventional methods is presented.

J.N.K. Rao gives an overview of the methods and models used for small area estimation. This is an update of his previous overview (Ghosh and Rao, 1994, Statistical Science). He first presents a general discussion of small area models, making a distinction between area level models and unit level models. He then describes the development in three main approaches for inference based on these models: EBLUP, EB and HB, gives several examples of recent applications. Finally, he presents an interesting discussion identifying the gaps and areas that require further research.

Sirken and Shimizu derive a Horvitz-Thompson estimator for population based establishment sample surveys (PBESs). A PBES is a survey of establishments where the sampling frame consists of establishments with which a preliminary sample of households or individuals has had some contact.

Jean-Claude Deville shows how to use simple tools to calculate the variance of a complex estimator using a linearization technique. The process is that of a software used at INSEE for estimation of the variance of a complex estimator. It gives a way of computing the variance of a total estimated by the simple expansion estimator. In the case of a complex statistic, the process uses a derived variable that reduces the computations to those of the simple expansion estimator. Multiple examples are given to illustrate the process.

Brewer proposes a method of weight calibration in survey sampling, called cosmetic calibration, which yields cosmetic estimators of totals, i.e. estimators that can be interpreted as both design-based and prediction based. He also discusses variance estimation and shows how the problem of negative weights can be easily and naturally handled using cosmetic calibration. Finally he compares the properties of the weights and the resulting estimators to some alternative approaches using some Australian far data.

This guide presents information of interest to users of data from the Survey of Household Spending. Data are collected via personal interview conducted in January, February and March after the reference year using a paper questionnaire. Information is gathered about the spending habits, dwelling characteristics and household equipment of Canadian households during the reference year. The survey covers private households in the ten provinces and three territories. (The three territories are surveyed every second year.)

This guide includes definitions of survey terms and variables and descriptions of survey methodology and data quality. There is also a section describing the various statistics that can be created using expenditure data (e.g., budget share, market share, and aggregates).

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of existing methods and techniques making use of personal identifiers to support record linkage. Record linkage can be loosely defined as a methodology for manipulating and / or transforming personal identifiers from individual data records from one or more operational databases and subsequently attempting to match these personal identifiers to create a composite record about an individual. Record linkage is not intended to uniquely identify individuals for operational purposes; however, it does provide probabilistic matches of varying degrees of reliability for use in statistical reporting. Techniques employed in record linkage may also be of use for investigative purposes to help narrow the field of search against existing databases when some form of personal identification information exists.

Statistics Canada publishes several measures of farm income, each produced for a different purpose. This bulletin describes the concepts behind these different measures, the methods by which the measures are constructed, and the uses for which they were designed.

The Guide to health statistics leads to health-related information with links to vital statistics such as births, deaths, marriages and divorces, to cancer statistics, health determinants, health status, health care, smoking and tobacco use and more. There is also information on cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys from the Canadian Community Health Survey and the National Population Health Survey.

This user's guide has been developed by Health Statistics Division to facilitate access on health information at Statistics Canada. It includes information with links to products and programs from Health Statistics Division, other divisions at Statistics Canada and other health related programs outside Statistics Canada.

This paper describes the collection method and content of the 1999 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) income interview.

This report summarizes the comments received in response to a discussion paper on low income cut-offs released in January 2000.

This publication includes a list of federal and provincial courts across the country. The purpose of this directory is to identify all courts (permanent and most frequently visited circuit points) in Canada by type, level, and location.

The publication guides the user through the vast array of labour market and income data sources. It offers detailed descriptions of the various surveys, including the data collected. A summary chart gives snapshot information for comparisons.

This practical and informative guide for manufacturers and exporters will assist in navigating through numerous Statistics Canada products and services. In addition, some recent articles and research papers have been highlighted.

This report explains the concept of income and provides definitions of the various sources of income and derived income variables. It also documents the various aspects of the census that can have an impact on census income estimates.