Introduction

Supply and use tables (SUTs) represent a detailed snapshot of all economic activity taking place in a geographic region. They are a powerful analytical tool that presents the structure of an economy as well as interlinkages among the various economic actors. SUTs are presented in the form of tables that illustrate the flow of goods and services within the economy from their production or import to intermediate consumption or final use. The supply table shows the supply of products from domestic industries and imports. The use table tracks the use of those products as intermediate consumption and final uses. Intermediate consumption refers to goods and services consumed by domestic industries to produce other products. Final uses represents the final consumption of products by households, non-profit institutions serving households (NPISH), governments, capital formation, changes in inventory, and exports. The SUTs include measures of income generated in the production process. Data within the SUTs can be used to measure economic aggregates such as gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, only SUTs provide a coherently integrated picture of the economy in terms of industries and products. This consistency (among other benefits) ensures that all three approaches of measuring GDP generate identical results[1].

Canada is one of few countries that produce annual SUTs at the national and sub-national provincial/territorial levels. The main uses of Canadian SUTs are:

- Benchmarking. The Canadian SUTs are the “statistical anchor” for the rest of the Canadian System of Macroeconomic Accounts. For example, GDP estimates derived from SUTs serve as benchmarks when calculating monthly and quarterly measures of GDP.

- Analytical. SUTs are a powerful tool that can be used in the analyses of: the structure of production activities, the structure of product demand, employment, prices and costs, and other economic variables. The SUTs may also be used for impact analysis when transformed into input-output tables and models. Impact analysis can be used to answer such questions as, “What is the impact on employment levels in various industries given an increase in the level of car exports?”

The remainder of this article aims to provide further detail on the structure of Canadian SUTs and how to interpret the information within them.