Employment and unemployment

Description:

This paper examines the characteristics of men 55 and over who are no longer active in the labour market, and the "voluntary" or "involuntary" reasons for inactivity.

Description:

This article addresses overqualification, which concerns both workers and employers because people who hold jobs that make few demands on their skills have lower earnings and lower levels of productivity.

Description:

The wage progression of less skilled workers is of particular policy interest in light of evidence of skill-biased technology changes. There exist two conflicting views regarding the wage progression of less skilled workers. One view believes that work experience is the driving force for wage growth of less skilled workers, so effective policies should encourage workers to participate in the labour market and accumulate work experience. The other view stresses that less skilled workers are usually locked into dead-end jobs in which wages are stagnant and policies that facilitate job shopping (changing jobs and employers) would be desirable.

Job tenure is a key factor in testing the hypothesis that less skilled workers are locked into dead-end jobs. If the return to tenure is zero, the hypothesis cannot be rejected. An extended human capital model of wage growth for less skilled workers is estimated using data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) 1993 to 1998. In order to compare the wage growth mechanisms for workers with different skill endowments, the model is also estimated for workers with higher skill levels. The result implies that the return to job tenure for less skilled workers is significantly different from zero. This is inconsistent with the view that less skilled workers are locked into dead-end jobs.

The return to job tenure is also found to be greater than the return to total labour market experience for less skilled workers. This finding supports the notion that firm-specific human capital acquired by less skilled workers substitutes for their generally low human capital endowments and the accumulation of firm-specific human capital by less skilled workers greatly improves their earnings prospect.

Description:

Rural areas have a higher incidence of part-time employment. The average annual rate of part-time job growth in rural Canada was higher between 1987 and 1997 than between 1997 and 1999. The predominantly rural provinces have the highest incidence of part-time employment in their rural areas. The majority of part-time employment growth in rural areas is occurring in mainly urban provinces.

Description:

This paper discusses in detail issues dealing with the technical aspects of designing and conducting surveys. It is intended for an audience of survey methodologists.

The Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) is one of Statistics Canada's most important surveys. It is a monthly survey that collects data concerning the person's labour force status, the nature of the person's work or reason for not working, and the person's demographics. The survey sample consists of approximately 52,000 households. Coverage error is a measure of data quality that is important to any survey. One of the key measures of coverage error in the LFS is the percentage difference between the Census of Population estimates and the LFS population counts; this error is called slippage. A negative value indicates that the LFS has a problem of overcoverage, while a positive value indicates the LFS has an undercoverage problem. In general, slippage is positive, thus meaning that the LFS consistently misses people who should be enumerated.

The purpose of this study was to determine why slippage is increasing and what can be done to remedy it. The study was conducted in two stages. The first stage was a historical review of the projects that have studied and tried to control slippage in the LFS, as well as the operational changes that have been implemented over time. The second stage was an analysis of factors such as vacancy rates, non-response, demographics, urban and rural status and the impact of these factors on the slippage rate.

Description:

This publication provides the most current monthly labour market statistics. Each month, this publication contains a brief commentary highlighting recent developments in the Canadian labour market. It also includes a series of charts and tables on a variety of labour force characteristics, such as employment and unemployment for Canada, the provinces, metropolitan areas and economic regions.

Description:

The aging of the Canadian population is a well recognized phenomenon and has received considerable policy research attention, particularly in the health and public pension domains. Very little work has been focused on the impacts of aging at the organizational level. Foot and Venne studied the advancement of the baby boom through traditional organizational hierarchies, noting its impacts on human resource policies that encourage horizontal career development. Saba et al looked more particularly at the management of older professionals in the Quebec public service, finding that employee recognition was an important human resource strategy for motivating this group. We extend these studies further along the aging ladder -- to the point where retirement and replacement become the major concerns.

Looking at the management hierarchy within Statistics Canada, we use a microsimulation model first to estimate the expected level of retirements over the next 10 years. We then detail the adjustments to promotion and hiring rates required to replace outgoing managers. We then examine simulated microdata to estimate the experience effects of increasing turnover. Finally, we use the demographic features of the model to examine whether the increasing turnover is likely to increase the representation of women and visible minorities among Statistics Canada managers.

Given the assumptions outlined in the paper, we find that increasing turnover rates in the next 10 years will generally not reduce management experience to below recently observed levels. We also find that given equal promotion rates for men and women, the representation rate of women among Statistics Canada managers is likely to increase rapidly in coming years. On the other hand, visible minority representation among managers will likely stall for several years, even with proactive recruitment and advancement policies.

Description:

Like most other surveys, non-response often occurs in the Current Employment Survey conducted monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In a given month, imputation using reported data from previous months generally provides more efficient survey estimators than ignoring non-respondents and adjusting survey weights. However, imputation also has an effect on variance estimation: treating imputed values as reported data and applying a standard variance estimation method lead to negatively biased variance estimators. In this article, we propose some variance estimators using the Grouped Balanced Half Sample method and re-imputation to take imputation into account. Some simulation results for the finite sample performance of the imputed survey estimators and their variance estimators are presented.

Description:

This paper explores the relationship between employers' computer technology investments and employees' training and education, with emphasis on the education of new hires.

Description:

The 2001 Community Profiles provide 2001 Census data for close to 6,000 communities, as well as for large and smaller metropolitan areas. These profiles contain free information for all Canadian communities (cities, towns, villages, Indian reserves and settlements, etc.), for counties or their equivalents and for metropolitan areas, as well as data for 2003 health regions. Additional information on data quality, definitions, data quality indexes, special notes and other supporting text is available.

Description:

Labour force characteristic estimates by visible minority group, region, age group, and sex.

Description: Number of employees and unemployment rate by population centre and rural area, sex and age group, last 5 months.

Description:

Number of employees by class of worker, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), and population centre and rural area, last 5 months.

Description: Number of persons in the labour force (employment and unemployment) and not in the labour force, unemployment rate, participation rate, and employment rate, by census metropolitan area, sex and age group, last 5 months.

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Number of employees by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and census metropolitan area, last 5 months.

Description:

Number of persons in the labour force (employment and unemployment), unemployment rate, participation rate and employment rate by census metropolitan area. Data are presented for 12 months earlier, previous month and current month, as well as year-over-year and month-to-month level change and percentage change. Data are also available for the standard error of the estimate, the standard error of the month-to-month change and the standard error of the year-over-year change.

Description:

Number of persons in the labour force (employment and unemployment), unemployment rate, participation rate and employment rate by census metropolitan area. Data are presented for 12 months earlier, previous month and current month, as well as year-over-year and month-to-month level change and percentage change. Data are also available for the standard error of the estimate, the standard error of the month-to-month change and the standard error of the year-over-year change.

Description:

Number of persons in the labour force (employment and unemployment), unemployment rate, participation rate and employment rate by Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver census metropolitan areas. Data are presented for 12 months earlier, previous month and current month, as well as year-over-year and month-to-month level change and percentage change. Data are also available for the standard error of the estimate, the standard error of the month-tomonth change and the standard error of the year-over-year change.

Description:

Number of persons in the labour force (employment and unemployment), unemployment rate, participation rate and employment rate by Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver census metropolitan areas, last 5 months. Data are also available for the standard error of the estimate, the standard error of the month-to-month change and the standard error of the year-over-year change.

Description:

Number of persons in the labour force (employment and unemployment) and not in the labour force, unemployment rate, participation rate and employment rate by economic region, last 5 months. Data are also available for the standard error of the estimate and the standard error of the year-over-year change.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: The agricultural sector in Canada has relied increasingly on temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to fill the longstanding labour shortage. The number of TFWs in crop production, animal production and aquaculture, and support activities for crop and animal production more than tripled between 2005 and 2020. This study examines the transition to permanent residency (PR) of TFWs in primary agriculture and the retention in the sector among those who obtained PR. The study focuses on TFWs whose first employment was in primary agriculture and who entered the sector between 2005 and 2020.

Description: Temporary residents constitute an important supply of labour for the Canadian economy. However, some of them do not work in a given year, even when holding a valid work permit. This article estimates the share of temporary residents who had paid employment but were “weakly attached” to the Canadian labour market in 2019.

Description: Research generally supports the idea that technological change has favoured the demand for workers in occupations requiring higher levels of education and skills and negatively affected employment in occupations requiring lower skill levels. This article assesses the changes over the past two decades in the occupational skill level of employment in Canada, with a focus on the role of immigration in the changing occupational structure.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Indigenous Peoples are an integral part of the farm population and have been contributing to the agricultural landscape of what is now Canada for many centuries before the arrival of settlers. This article provides a socioeconomic portrait of the Indigenous farm population, touching on population changes, gender, age, education, type of farming activity and income.

Description: Several factors may have contributed to the improved labour market outcomes for recent immigrants since the mid-2010s, such as the expansion of the two-step immigration selection process and the introduction of the Express Entry system in 2015. This article presents updated analyses regarding the employment and earnings outcomes of recent immigrants. It also discusses factors that might influence these outcomes in the near term.

Description: Using a database that integrates anonymized data from the Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS) with data from the 2016 Census, the 2021 Census and the T1 Family File (T1FF), this article will examine demographic characteristics of Indigenous graduates at the bachelor level, as well as certain job quality indicators, such as annual employment income level, unionization rate and pension plan coverage rate, at the beginning of their career, that is two years after graduating.

Description: From 2010 to 2019, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) response rate – or the proportion of selected households who complete an LFS interview – had been on a slow downward trend, due to a range of social and technological changes which have made it more challenging to contact selected households and to persuade Canadians to participate when they are contacted. These factors were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the suspension of face-to-face interviewing between April 2020 and fall 2022. Statistics Canada is committed to restoring LFS response rates to the greatest extent possible. This technical paper discusses two initiatives that are underway to ensure that the LFS estimates continue to provide an accurate and representative portrait of the Canadian labour market.

Description:

This report contains basic conceptual and data quality information intended to facilitate the use and interpretation of census industry data. It provides an overview of the industry processing cycle, including elements such as regional processing, edit and imputation, and the tabulation of error rates. Notable changes in the industrial classification structure are discussed as well as differences in the coding procedures from the previous census (1996). The report concludes with summary tables that indicate the level of data quality in the 2001 Census industry data.

Description:

The Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) is a longitudinal survey designed to provide policy-relevant information about school-work transitions and factors influencing pathways. YITS will provide vehicle for future research and analysis of major transitions in young people's lives, particularly those between education, training and work. Information obtained from, and research based on, the survey will help clarify the nature and causes of short and long-term challenges young people face in school-work transitions and support policy planning and decision making to help prevent or remedy these problems.

Objectives of the Youth in Transition Survey were developed after an extensive consultation with stakeholders with an interest in youth and school-work transitions. Content includes measurement of major transitions in young people's lives including virtually all formal educational experiences and most labour-market experiences. Factors influencing transitions are also included family background, school experiences, achievement, aspirations and expectations, and employment experiences.

The implementation plan encompasses a longitudinal survey for each of two age cohorts, to be surveyed every two years. Data from a cohort entering at age 15 will permit analysis of long-term school-work transition patterns. Data from a cohort entering at ages18-20 will provide more immediate, policy-relevant information on young adults in the labour market.

Cycle one for the cohort aged 15 will include information collected from youth, their parents, and school principals. The sample design is a school-based frame that allows the selection of schools, and then individuals within schools. This design will permit analysis of school effects, a research domain not currently addressed by other Statistics Canada surveys. Methods of data collection include a self-completed questionnaire for youth and school principals, a telephone interview with parents, and assessment of youth competency in reading, science and mathematics as using self-completed test booklets provided under the integration of YITS with the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). A pilot survey was conducted in April 1999 and the main survey took place in April-May 2000. Interviews were conducted with 30,000 students aged 15 from 1,000 schools in Canada. A telephone interview with parents of selected students took place in June 2000.

The sample design for the cohort aged 18-20 is similar to that of the Labour-Force survey. The method of data collection is computer-assisted telephone interviewing. The pilot survey was conducted in January 1999. In January-February 2000, 23, 000 youth participated in the main survey data collection.

Data from both cohorts is expected to be available in 2001. Following release of the first international report by the OECD/PISA project and the first national report, data will be publically available, permitting detailed exploration of content themes.

Description:

This paper examines a new variable which would show whether a person's job is related to his or her postsecondary education. This variable would help to explain other characteristics measured in the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID), such as wages, supervisory roles, and job stability.

Description:

The employment/population ratio is a good barometer of the state of the economy and an important though little-used labour market indicator. This article takes a look at the ratio's strengths and limitations, as well as its variation since 1946. Provincial and international comparisons are included.

Description:

This paper presents an analysis of the questions in the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) relating to supervision and management. It uses data collected in January 1993.

Description:

This paper examines the robustness of a measure of the average complete duration of unemployment in Canada to a host of assumptions used in its derivation. In contrast to the average incomplete duration of unemployment, which is a lagging cyclical indicator, this statistic is a coincident indicator of the business cycle. The impact of using a steady state as opposed to a non steady state assumption, as well as the impact of various corrections for response bias are explored. It is concluded that a non steady state estimator would be a valuable compliment to the statistics on unemployment duration that are currently released by many statistical agencies, and particularly Statistics Canada.

Description:

The Standard Occupational Classification provides a systematic classification structure to identify and categorize the entire range of occupational activity in Canada. This up-to-date classification is based upon, and easily related to, the National Occupational Classification. It consists of 10 broad occupational categories which are subdivided into major groups, minor groups and unit groups. Definitions and occupational titles are provided for each unit group. An alphabetical index of the occupational titles classified to the unit group level is also included.

Description:

This study illustrates quarterly trends in unemployment rates based on alternative measures. By all of the indicators studies there was an overall increase in unemployment during the early 1990s.

Description: The objective of this program is to provide data on employment (number of employees, wages and salaries) in the public sector, i.e. the federal, provincial, territorial and local general governments, health and social service institutions, universities, colleges, vocational and trade institutions, school boards, and government business enterprises.

Description: This survey is an establishment census survey designed to gather data on employment, payrolls and paid-hours from larger employers (companies or establishments of 20 or more employees).