4.0 Scope of study

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The scope of this study is unchanged from last year. The information on the number of jobs, hours worked and employment earnings is presented for the same industry groups and occupations for full- and part-time jobs. The information is also available according to the same characteristics of employees (gender, age group and immigrant status), however, the number of detailed cross-classifications by demographic characteristics has been reduced (see Appendix E).

The HRM annual estimates have been updated to 2006 from 2005 (in last year's release). In addition, previous estimates for 1997 to 2005 have been revised as a result of revision of Labour Force Survey estimates and consequent revision of the Canadian Productivity Accounts data, both of which are key inputs to the HRM.

The main difference with this report is that only results related to annual total employment in the tourism industry groups of the HRM are provided. Owing to resource limitations, the annual estimates related to jobs directly attributable to tourism demand (spending) and selected quarterly results have been suspended for the time being.

4.1 Industry classifications

This study uses the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2002 to define the tourism-related industries. Briefly, NAICS is a comprehensive industry classification system encompassing all economic activities. It is designed for the compilation of production statistics and, therefore, for the classification of data relating to establishments (and locations). The criteria used to group establishments into industries in NAICS are similarity of input structures, labour skills or production processes used.

In order to maintain the reliability of the data several tourism industries have been grouped together. Thus the tourism industry groups of the HRM include:

(1) Transportation

Air transportation

All other transportation (includes rail, water, bus, taxi and vehicle rental)

(2) Accommodation

(3) Food and beverage services

(4) Recreation and entertainment and

(5) Travel services.

The transportation industry group is further disaggregated into the air transportation and all other transportation industries. (See Appendix C for complete list including NAICS codes).

Employment is also generated in non-tourism industries (e.g. Retail Trade). This employment is not included in this study as it would involve calculating tourism ratios in almost all industries in the economy.

4.2 Occupational classification

This study uses the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 1991 definitions of occupations. The basic principle of classification of the SOC is that of kind of work performed. An occupation is thus defined as a collection of jobs, sufficiently similar in work performed to be grouped under a common title for classification purposes.

The selection of occupations for this study is based on an examination of the occupational data from the 2001 Census for persons in the experienced labour force whose main job was in one of the tourism industry groups of the HRM. Occupations with an estimated 5,000 employed persons (i.e., with underlying samples of roughly 1000 persons) or more were selected for this study. Occupations with fewer persons employed are too "small" to support time series based on much thinner samples from the LFS. A detailed listing of occupations along with their SOC codes is included in Appendix D.