Human Resource Module of the Tourism Satellite Account, Update to 2005

Archived Content

Information identified as archived is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been altered or updated since it was archived. Please "contact us" to request a format other than those available.

Executive summary

This study provides detailed employment data in a Human Resource Module (HRM) to the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA). This information is useful for tourism analysts and employment and training planners.

Since the HRM is based on the same concepts as the TSA and the National Tourism Indicators (NTI), direct comparisons can be made with the data in these accounts.

With this release the HRM is updated to 2005 from 2002. In addition, revised Labour Force Survey and Canadian Productivity Accounts’ estimates have been incorporated, leading to revisions of the HRM estimates for 1997 to 2002.

Detailed information for all tourism industries, in this case aggregated into five industry groups, is available. These industry groups include transportation (which is further split into air transportation and other transportation), accommodation, food and beverage services, recreation and entertainment and travel services.

The HRM provides information on the number of employee jobs, hours worked, and employment earnings according to whether the jobs are full-time or part-time, by occupation. The same information is also available according to the gender, age group and immigrant status of employees. More aggregated estimates are provided for self-employment jobs.

One of the strengths of the HRM is that it can convey information from two different perspectives, the total industry approach and the TSA approach. With the former, all jobs in an industry are estimated. With the TSA approach, in contrast, only a fraction of these jobs, the ones that can be directly attributed to spending by tourists, are estimated.

With this update, the annual estimates of total employment in the tourism industry groups of the HRM are made available. Estimates of the employment that can be directly attributed to tourism demand (or spending by tourists), will be released later in the fall.

In 2005, 1.8 million jobs were held in the tourism industries covered in the HRM. This represented about 11% of the 16.5 million jobs in the economy that year.

According to the National Tourism Indicators, 502.7 thousand of these 1.8 million jobs could be directly attributed to tourism demand (spending).

The number of jobs in the tourism industries was up 0.9% in 2005, after a strong 2.1% rebound in 2004 from SARS-related job losses a year earlier. For comparison, the number of jobs economy-wide was up 1.6% in 2005, following a 1.9% gain in 2004.

Solid gains were posted in air transportation (+3.5%), accommodation (+2.5%) and travel services (+4.5%). Job growth was much weaker in recreation and entertainment (+0.7%), food and beverage services (+0.3%) and other transportation (+0.5%).

The annual hours worked in jobs in the tourism industries averaged 1,554 hours in 2005, compared to an economy-wide average of 1,738 hours per job. Hours worked slipped, on a per job basis, in the sector (-1.9%) and economy-wide (-0.8%) from 2004.

Hourly compensation in tourism in 2005 was $17.75 per hour, up 6.1% from one year earlier. Hourly compensation averaged $25.21 across all jobs in the economy, up a somewhat weaker 4.4%.

You need to use the free Adobe Reader to view PDF documents. To view (open) these files, simply click on the link. To download (save) them, right-click on the link. Note that if you are using Internet Explorer or AOL, PDF documents sometimes do not open properly. See Troubleshooting PDFs. PDF documents may not be accessible by some devices. For more information, visit the Adobe website or contact us for assistance.