The Business & Community Newsletter – December 2019

This Study: Trends in the citizenship rate among new immigrants to Canada uses census data from 1991 to 2016 to examine changes in the citizenship rate among recent immigrants who meet the residency requirement to become citizens. The results show that the citizenship rate among recent immigrants peaked in 1996 and declined considerably since then. This decline primarily occurred after 2006. Furthermore, the decline in the citizenship rate varied across socio-demographic characteristics, and the timing of the decline varied across immigrant groups as well.

Immigrants with lower family incomes experienced a much larger decline in citizenship rates than did those with higher family incomes. The decline among lower income immigrant families largely occurred between 2006 and 2011. The citizenship rate also declined much more among immigrants with poorer official language skills than it did among immigrants whose mother tongue was English or French. The citizenship rate among immigrants with poorer official language skills has been declining since 2001 and was observed over all intercensal periods. Education was also a factor, with citizenship rates declining much more among immigrants with lower than higher levels of educational attainment. This was primary observed between 2011 and 2016.

When all three of these factors—family income, knowledge of official languages, and educational attainment—are combined, the citizenship rate was more or less constant between 1996 and 2016 for the most advantaged group of recent immigrants (i.e., with a high income, university education, and English or French as a mother tongue). In contrast, it declined significantly among the more disadvantaged group (i.e., with a low income, high school or less education and mother tongue not English or French).

There was also significant variation in the extent to which citizenship rates declined among immigrants from different source regions. Most striking was the large decline in citizenship take-up among immigrants from East Asia—mainly China. Indeed, by 2016 the citizenship rate among recent Chinese immigrants more closely resembled the rate among immigrants from developed rather than from developing countries.

On November 14, 2019, Statistics Canada released the first set of Residential Property Price Indexes (RPPI). These quarterly series measure the change over time in the selling price of residential properties. Data is available from the first quarter of 2017 up to and including the third quarter of 2019, for the census metropolitan areas of Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and Victoria, as well as for the six-CMA composite.

The RPPI is a unique product that, for the first time, provides timely information on the housing real estate market in Canada. It combines new and resale components, provides a breakdown between house and condominium apartment, and captures price movements in a timely manner, to give a complete picture of the housing market in Canada.

The Residential Property Price Index is composed of the New Housing Price Index, the New Condominium Apartment Price Index and the Resale Residential Property Price Index which was also published for the first time on November 14. Users can see the release and accompanying tools and products in The Daily.

The goal of this index is to provide the necessary information for users to assess the economic situation of the real estate markets in Canada and to respond to international reporting requirements such as the G20 Data Gaps Initiative and Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS) Plus.

On November 25, 2019 Statistics Canada released data on the number of teaching staff in Canadian universities. The release includes regional data and is accompanied by an easy-to-use interactive tool. You can click on an individual province and get a breakdown of the number of professors, associate professors and assistant professors. The tool also includes data on gender and median age.

Check out Statistics on full-time academic teaching staff at Canadian universities: Interactive tool

As the newspaper publishing industry continues its digital transition, digital advertising sales grew by 20.8% from 2016 to 2018, reaching $295.6 million. However, this increase was not enough to offset declining print advertising revenues. Total advertising sales were $1.5 billion in 2018, down 18.2% from 2016. Print advertising sales totaled $1.2 billion, down from $1.6 billion in 2016 and from $2.1 billion in 2014.

Overall, newspaper publishers' operating revenue declined to $2.7 billion in 2018, down 12.9% from 2016. Operating expenses, down 10.6% from 2016, did not keep pace with declining revenues, further lowering the industry's profit margin. The operating profit margin decreased to 3.3% in 2018, down from 5.7% in 2016 and 9.3% in 2014. Declining advertising sales had the largest impact on the industry's profitability.

One of the challenges facing newspapers is that their main competitors have changed. As they endeavour to generate additional revenue from digital advertising, many newspapers find themselves competing not only with other newspapers, but also with other services such as online search engines, social media and programmatic advertising services. These other services are capable of reaching larger audiences and, in some cases, delivering advertising at lower costs.

For more information check out Newspaper publishers, 2018