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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 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.

In the private sector, 10.1% of enterprises use the Internet to sell goods and services. The information and cultural industries utilize this growing form of commerce the greatest (20.1%). In comparison, 14.5% of public sector institutions sell goods or services with educational services leading the way, followed by federal and provincial governments.

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.

This research paper summarizes the approach, methodology and results of a study of the labour market behaviour of persons in various categories of attachment to the labour market. The analysis focuses on the transition probabilities for various categories of labour market attachment. Specifically, the study will include a discussion of the behavioural differences of the following groups:

a) a comparison of transitions from U (unemployed), M (marginally attached - wants work) and N (not attached - does not want work); b) a further breakdown of the transitions from U by active searchers, passive searchers, those on temporary layoff and short-term future starts; c) a further breakdown of transitions for M by reason for not searching; and d) a further breakdown of transitions from N by long-term future starts and other.

The study will be based on 1997-1999 Labour Force Survey data.

This article focuses on characteristics of primary Internet service providers (ISPs), that is, firms reporting that 50% or more of their revenues come from ISP activities. It looks at challenges facing ISPs including barriers to growth, competing in the Internet sector, complaints and practices regarding offensive content and conduct, as well as ISPs' perceptions of what is important to their customers. These items are analysed after classifying ISPs into four different size categories, enabling one to see any differences in perception or conduct between ISPs of varying sizes.

The latest issue consists of the article "Wood manufacturers have been stimulated by the strength of the domestic market" by Gilles Simard. The effects of the decrease in interest rates in Canada in 1996 were felt fully in 1997. The increased activity in housing development in Canada, and to a lesser extent, in the United States, has stimulated the wood industry. However, the crisis in Asia during the summer of 1997 was a heavy blow to British Columbia, the province that provides half of Canada's lumber. This article, based on the results of the 1997 Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM), briefly describes changes in the industry in 1997 and 1998 and looks at recent events in.

Often, the same information is gathered almost simultaneously for several different surveys. In France, this practice is institutionalized for household surveys that have a common set of demographic variables, i.e., employment, residence and income. These variables are important co-factors for the variables of interest in each survey, and if used carefully, can reinforce the estimates derived from each survey. Techniques for calibrating uncertain data can apply naturally in this context. This involves finding the best unbiased estimator in common variables and calibrating each survey based on that estimator. The estimator thus obtained in each survey is always a linear estimator, the weightings of which can be easily explained and the variance can be obtained with no new problems, as can the variance estimate. To supplement the list of regression estimators, this technique can also be seen as a ridge-regression estimator, or as a Bayesian-regression estimator.

The U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey uses two instruments, a diary and an in-person interview, to collect data on many categories of consumer expenditures. Consequently, it is important to use these data efficiently to estimate mean expenditures and related parameters. Three options are: (1) use only data from the diary source; (2) Use only data from the interview source; and (3) use generalized least squares, or related methods, to combine the diary and interview data. Historically, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has focused on options (1) and (2) for estimation at the five or six-digit Universal Classification Code level. Evaluation and possible implementation of option (3) depends on several factors, including possible measurement biases in the diary and interview data; the empirical magnitude of these biases, relative to the standard errors of customary mean estimators; and the degree of homogeneity of these biases across strata and periods. This paper reviews some issues related to options (1) through (3); describes a relatively simple generalized least squares method for implementation of option (3); and discussed the need for diagnostics to evaluate the feasibility and relative efficiency of the generalized least squares method.

The geographical and temporal relationship between outdoor air pollution and asthma was examined by linking together data from multiple sources. These included the administrative records of 59 general practices widely dispersed across England and Wales for half a million patients and all their consultations for asthma, supplemented by a socio-economic interview survey. Postcode enabled linkage with: (i) computed local road density; (ii) emission estimates of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides, (iii) measured/interpolated concentration of black smoke, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants at practice level. Parallel Poisson time series analysis took into account between-practice variations to examine daily correlations in practices close to air quality monitoring stations. Preliminary analyses show small and generally non-significant geographical associations between consultation rates and pollution markers. The methodological issues relevant to combining such data, and the interpretation of these results will be discussed.

The artificial sample was generated in two steps. The first step, based on a master panel, was a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) carried out on basic variables. Then, "dummy" individuals were generated randomly using the distribution of each "significant" factor in the analysis. Finally, for each individual, a value was generated for each basic variable most closely linked to one of the previous factors. This method ensured that sets of variables were drawn independently. The second step consisted in grafting some other data bases, based on certain property requirements. A variable was generated to be added on the basis of its estimated distribution, using a generalized linear model for common variables and those already added. The same procedure was then used to graft the other samples. This method was applied to the generation of an artificial sample taken from two surveys. The artificial sample that was generated was validated using sample comparison testing. The results were positive, demonstrating the feasibility of this method.

Electricity rates that vary by time-of-day have the potential to significantly increase economic efficiency in the energy market. A number of utilities have undertaken economic studies of time-of-use rates schemes for their residential customers. This paper uses meta-analysis to examine the impact of time-of-use rates on electricity demand pooling the results of thirty-eight separate programs. There are four key findings. First, very large peak to off-peak price ratios are needed to significantly affect peak demand. Second, summer peak rates are relatively effective compared to winter peak rates. Third, permanent time-or-use rates are relatively effective compared to experimental ones. Fourth, demand charges rival ordinary time-of-use rates in terms of impact.

We use data on 14 populations of coho salmon to estimate critical parameters that are vital for management of fish populations. Parameter estimates from individual data sets are inefficient and can be highly biased, and we investigate methods to overcome these problems. Combination of data sets using nonlinear mixed effects models provides more useful results, however questions of influence and robustness are raised. For comparison, robust estimates are obtained. Model-robustness is also explored using a family of alternative functional forms. Our results allow ready calculation of the limits of exploitation and may help to prevent extinction of fish stocks. Similar methods can be applied in other contexts where parameter estimation is part of a larger decision-making process.

This user's guide provides a detailed description of the CD-ROM Income trends in Canada (13F0022XCB). It also provides a glossary, a description of the major concepts as well as an overview of the data source, the Survey of Consumer Finances.

This paper outlines the process of delineating the agricultural land base (ecumene) in Canada based on data from the 1991 Census of Agriculture.

This paper reconstructs the development and evolution of the Canadian agricultural statistical system. It describes the expanding and increasingly important role of administrative data, which is integrated into survey and census information in order to complement, supplement or replace survey information or to assist with frame maintenance.

This paper describes the experiences, the issues and the expectations of the many different players involved in the implementation of document imaging for the Canadian Census of Agriculture.