Keyword search

Description:

A framework for the dynamic analysis of unemployment is presented, and applied to Canadian and U.S. data. The focus of the analysis is upon the distinctionbetween being unemployed and becoming unemployed, that is, between the stock and the flow of unemployment. The share of a particular group in the stock ofunemployed will differ from its share in the flow into unemployment to the extent that the average duration of unemployment for the group differs from the economywide average. An analysis of Canadian and U.S. data leads to a series of stylized facts that permit a deeper understanding of unemployment in the two countries, andof the differences between them. Significant differences in the average duration of unemployment imply that stock shares are not good indicators of flow shares,changes in the stock share of some groups are due to changes in the flow share, while for others they are due to changes in the length of unemployment spells.Explanations of the Canada - U.S. unemployment rate gap should try to accommodate at least three facts uncovered by the analysis: (1) that employer initiatedpermanent separations are the primary means of entry into unemployment in Canada, while labour force entry plays a more important role in the US; (2)unemployment spells are significantly longer in Canada than in the U.S. because of longer spells for most groups regardless of reason for unemployment, not becauseof a compositional difference in the make up of the unemployed; and (3) that longer spell duration and a higher incidence of unemployment contribute about equallyto the trend increase in the Canada - U.S. unemployment differential during the 1980s.

Description:

Police-reported violent crime in Canada increased steadily from the early 1970s through to the early 1990s. Homicides, in particular, tend to be widely covered in the media, especially those of a brutal nature or those targeting the more vulnerable members of society. The 1993 General Social Survey indicated a growing concern among Canadians about threats of attack or violence. Yet the homicide rate has gradually been declining since the mid 1970s.

Description:

The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) measured the variation in basic literacy skills of adults in seven industrialized nations. This note outlines the aims and methodology of the landmark study and provides a snapshot of results for people in Canada, the United States and Germany.

Description:

Last November, Statistics Canada hosted its 12th annual International Symposium on Methodology Issues. This report outlines selected speakers' observations about the radical changes taking place in the creation and delivery of statistical information.

Description:

This study is one of a series that examines how technology adoption affects the skills of workers. Previous papers in the series have approached this issue in differentways with data from a variety of sources. Using data on the strategies and activities of small and medium-sized firms in both manufacturing and services industries,Baldwin and Johnson (1995), Baldwin, Johnson and Pedersen (1996) examine the connection between the different strategies that are pursued by growing firms.Firms that stress technological competencies are found to also place a greater emphasis on skill enhancement and training activities. Using survey data on the type oftechnology used in manufacturing plants and plant managers' perceptions of the skill requirements and training costs associated with the adoption of newtechnologies, Baldwin, Gray and Johnson (1995) find that technology use leads to greater skill requirements, more training, and higher training costs.This paper uses survey data on the incidence of advanced technology adoption and matched panel data on plant characteristics such as wages, capital intensity, andsize to examine the connection between technology use and the wage rates received by workers. Since higher wages are associated with higher skill levels,establishing a connection between technology use and wages reinforces the earlier findings.

Description:

This paper describes the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) following rules, which govern who is traced and who is interviewed. It also outlines the conceptual basis for these procedures.

Description:

This paper evaluates the effects of dependent interviewing on the 1994 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) labour data using some early results.

Description:

In 1994, Statistics Canada began data collection for the National Population Health Survey (NPHS), a household survey designed to mesure the health status of Canadians and to expand knowledge of health determinants. The survey is longitudinal, with data being collected on selected panel members every second year. This article focuses on the NPHS sample design ant its rationale. Topics include sample allocation, representativeness, and selection; modifications in Quebec and the territories; and integration of the NPHS with the National Longitudinal Survey of Children. The final section considers some methodological issues to be addresses in future waves of the survey.

Description:

Changes in Statistics Canada's annual population estimates, introduced in 1993, have an impact on a wide range of social, economic and demographic indicators. Any indicator that relies on population estimates will be affected by the new figures. This article describes the adjustment and examines its impact on health and vital statistics rates. With rare exceptions, all rates decrease as the denominators are adjusted upward. For example, accident rates, suicide rates, and age-specific fertility rates based on the adjustment population are lower than those previously calculated. The extent of the adjustment, however, depends on the geographic and demographic characteristics of the population at risk. Analysts whose work concentrates on special subgroups for whom the adjustment is particularly great (such as young adult men) may wish to pay closer attention to the new population figures. Although the new rates are lower than before, underlying trends and patterns over time or across subcategories are quite similar. The revised series incorporates estimates of net census undercoverage, and for the first time, includes non-permanent residents. In 1991, net census undercoverage and non-permanent residents together amounted to about one million persons, or 3.6% of the revised Canadian population of 28,120,100.

Description:

The statistical observation that small firms have created the majority of new jobs during the 1980s has had a tremendous influence on public policy. Governmentshave looked to the small firm sector for employment growth, and have promoted policies to augment this expansion. However, recent research in the US suggeststhat net job creation in the small firm sector may have been overestimated, relative to that in large firms. This paper addresses various measurement issues raised inthe recent research, and uses a very unique Canadian longitudinal data set that encompasses all companies in the Canadian economy to reassess the issue of jobcreation by firm size. We conclude that over the 1978-92 period, for both the entire Canadian economy and the manufacturing sector, the growth rate of (net)employment decreases monotonically as the size of firm increases, no matter which method of sizing firms is used. The small firm sector has accounted for adisproportionate share of both gross job gains and job losses, and in that aggregate, accounted for a disproportionate share of the employment increase over theperiod. Measurement does matter, however, as the magnitude of the difference in the growth rates of small and large firms is very sensitive to the measurementapproaches used. The paper also produces results for various industrial sectors, asks whether the more rapid growth in industries with a high proportion of smallfirms is responsible for the findings at the all-economy level, and examines employment growth in existing small and large firms (ie excluding births). It is found thatemployment growth in the population of existing small and large firms is very similar.

Description:

The first in this series is the Consulting Engineering Services Price Index (CEPI) which is an annual index that measures changes in the prices for services provided by consulting engineers. These services encompass advisory and design work as well as construction or project management. They are provided for many types of projects (fields of specialization), and to both Canadian and foreign clients. Price indexes are published for 10 fields of specialization as well as for national, regional, and foreign markets.

Description:

The National Population Health Survey (NPHS) is designed to enhance the understanding of the processes affecting health. The survey collects cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data. In 1994/95 the survey interviewed a panel of 17,276 individuals, then returned to interview them a second time in 1996/97. The response rate for these individuals was 96% in 1996/97. Data collection from the panel will continue for up to two decades. For cross-sectional purposes, data were collected for a total of 81,000 household residents in all provinces (except people on Indian reserves or on Canadian Forces bases) in 1996/97.

This overview illustrates the variety of information available by presenting data on perceived health, chronic conditions, injuries, repetitive strains, depression, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, consultations with medical professionals, use of medications and use of alternative medicine.

Description:

Documentation to accompany public-use microdata files. Contains a detailed description of the survey design, content and methods, as well as the record layout and the data dictionary.

Description:

Cycle 10 collected data from persons 15 years and older and concentrated on the respondent's family. Topics covered include marital history, common- law unions, biological, adopted and step children, family origins, child leaving and fertility intentions.

The target population of the GSS (General Social Survey) consisted of all individuals aged 15 and over living in a private household in one of the ten provinces.

Description: The document focuses on the evolution of Statistics Canada's labour productivity program, tracing its historical background, outlining its structure, as well as detailing the methodology and data sources used. It then discusses the diverse applications of provincial productivity data, identifies key users of productivity statistics, and highlights essential considerations for their interpretation. Finally, the document addresses the review process for quarterly and annual productivity measures and recent program improvements.

Description: Demographic documentsis a series of texts intended for scholars and researchers, published occasionally by the Demography Division of Statistics Canada for their methodological, analytical or descriptive interest in the population field.

Description: Many things have been written about Jean-Claude Deville in tributes from the statistical community (see Tillé, 2022a; Tillé, 2022b; Christine, 2022; Ardilly, 2022; and Matei, 2022) and from the École nationale de la statistique et de l’administration économique (ENSAE) and the Société française de statistique. Pascal Ardilly, David Haziza, Pierre Lavallée and Yves Tillé provide an in-depth look at Jean-Claude Deville’s contributions to survey theory. To pay tribute to him, I would like to discuss Jean-Claude Deville’s contribution to the more day-to-day application of methodology for all the statisticians at the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) and at the public statistics service. To do this, I will use my work experience, and particularly the four years (1992 to 1996) I spent working with him in the Statistical Methods Unit and the discussions we had thereafter, especially in the 2000s on the rolling census.

Description: The validity of survival estimates from cancer registry data depends, in part, on the identification of the deaths of deceased cancer patients. People whose deaths are missed seemingly live on forever and are informally referred to as “immortals”, and their presence in registry data can result in inflated survival estimates. This study assesses the issue of immortals in the Canadian Cancer Registry (CCR) using a recently proposed method that compares the survival of long-term survivors of cancers for which “statistical” cure has been reported with that of similar people from the general population.

Description: This series provides detailed documentation on the issues, concepts, methodology, data quality and other relevant research related to household expenditures from the Survey of Household Spending, the Homeowner Repair and Renovation Survey and the Food Expenditure Survey.

Description: This article presents data sources and methodology for the For-hire Motor Carrier Freight Services Price Index (FHMCFSPI). The FHMCFSPI measures the monthly and quarterly change in the price of shipping services provided by trucking companies in Canada. The index is an important indicator of economic activity within the truck transportation industry, as well as a tool that can be utilized by the industry for cost monitoring, contract assessment and benchmark comparisons.

Description: Recent work in survey domain estimation allows for estimation of population domain means under a priori assumptions expressed in terms of linear inequality constraints. For example, it might be known that the population means are non-decreasing along ordered domains. Imposing the constraints has been shown to provide estimators with smaller variance and tighter confidence intervals. In this paper we consider a formal test of the null hypothesis that all the constraints are binding, versus the alternative that at least one constraint is non-binding. The test of constant versus increasing domain means is a special case. The power of the test is substantially better than the test with the same null hypothesis and an unconstrained alternative. The new test is used with data from the National Survey of College Graduates, to show that salaries are positively related to the subject’s father’s educational level, across fields of study and over several years of cohorts.

Description: This methodological document accompanies the infographic entitled “Students in private postsecondary education, 2020: Results of a feasibility study”. It describes the methodology and data limitations for the integration of the T2202 Tuition and Enrolment Certificate with the Census 2021 for the infographic. It also explores the coherence of the results across different data sources, namely the Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS) and T1 Family File (T1FF), to validate the results. The data integration was possible due to the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform (ELMLP).

Description:

A summary of methodological treatments as applied to the August 2020 CPI in response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on price collection, price availability, and business closures.

Description:

This document describes the methodological details for the Commercial Rents Services Price Index (CRSPI). It includes information about the purpose of the index, data sources, the index estimation and aggregation methods.

Description:

The reference guide provides an overview of the Geographic Attribute File product, including the general methodology used to create it.

Description:

This reference guide is intended for users of the census boundary files. The guide provides an overview of the files, the general methodology used to create them, and important technical information for users.

Description:

This paper introduces and explains modifications made to the Labour Force Survey estimates in January 2021. Some of these modifications include the adjustment of all LFS estimates to reflect population counts based on the 2016 Census and includes updates to 2016 Geography classification system.

Description:

This fact sheet provides detailed insight into the design and methodology of the content test component of the 2019 Census Test. This test evaluated changes to the wording and flow of some questions, as well as the potential addition of new questions, to help determine the content of the 2021 Census of Population.

Description:

This note provides the definition of a first-time homebuyer concept used in the 2018 Canadian Housing Survey (CHS). It also includes the methodology used to identify first-time homebuyers and provides sensitivity analysis under alternative methodologies.

Description:

The Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the official source of monthly estimates of total employment and unemployment. Following the 2011 census, the LFS underwent a sample redesign to account for the evolution of the population and labour market characteristics, to adjust to changes in the information needs and to update the geographical information used to carry out the survey. The redesign program following the 2011 census culminated with the introduction of a new sample at the beginning of 2015. This report is a reference on the methodological aspects of the LFS, covering stratification, sampling, collection, processing, weighting, estimation, variance estimation and data quality.

Description:

The Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) serves as the highest-level governance tool for quality management at Statistics Canada. The QAF gives an overview of the quality management and risk mitigation strategies used by the Agency’s program areas. The QAF is used in conjunction with Statistics Canada management practices, such as those described in the Quality Guidelines.

Description:

The Methodological Guide: Canadian System of Environmental-Economic Accounting provides readers with information on environmental-economic accounts at Statistics Canada. It provides links to produced data and publications and describes the concepts, sources, and methods used to compile them. Topics include ecosystem accounting, asset accounts (natural resources in physical and monetary terms), physical flow accounts (energy and water use, and waste and greenhouse gas emissions), environmental activity statistics (expenditures on environmental protection), and the applications and extensions of those accounts (attribution of physical flows to final demand and intensity measures).

This user's guide has been developed by the Environmental Statistics Program to facilitate access to environmental-economic accounting information throughout Statistics Canada and to explain its linkage with international standards, the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting. This guide is continually being updated to maintain its relevance.

Description:

This note discusses revised income estimates from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). These revisions to the SLID estimates make it possible to compare results from the Canadian Income Survey (CIS) to earlier years. The revisions address the issue of methodology differences between SLID and CIS.

Description:

This overview document describes the conceptual underpinnings of the Integrated Business Statistics Program and explains how program components facilitate a more integrated approach to economic surveying at Statistics Canada.