Executive summary

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Human Resource Module of the Tourism Satellite Account, Update to 2006

• This study provides detailed employment data in a Human Resource Module (HRM) of 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 Canadian TSA and the National Tourism Indicators, direct comparisons can be made with the data in these accounts.
• With this release the HRM is updated to 2006 from 2005. In addition, revised Labour Force Survey and Canadian Productivity Accounts' estimates have been incorporated, leading to revisions of the HRM estimates for 1997 to 2005.
• 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), have been suspended for the time being.
• In 2006, 1.8 million jobs were held in the tourism industries covered in the HRM. This represented about 11% of the 16.8 million jobs in the economy that year.
• According to the National Tourism Indicators, 509 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 2.1% in 2006, after a slight 0.2% decline in 2005. By comparison, the number of jobs economy-wide was up 1.8% in 2006, following a 1.6% gain in 2005.
• In 2006, solid gains were posted in Food and Beverage Services (+2.8%) and Recreation and Entertainment (+2.4%) while more modest gains were recorded in Air Transportation (+1.7%) and Travel Services (+1.3%). Job growth was much weaker in Accommodation (+0.4%) and Other Transportation (+0.4%).
• The annual hours worked in jobs in the tourism industries averaged 1,559 hours in 2006, compared to an economy-wide average of 1,738 hours per job. Hours worked edged up 0.1%, on a per job basis, in the sector in 2006, while they were unchanged economy-wide.
• Hourly compensation in tourism in 2006 was $17.95 per hour, up 4.2% from one year earlier. Hourly compensation averaged $26.40 across all jobs in the economy, up a comparable 4.1%.