Economic and Social Reports

Spotlight on data and research

Do aging baby boomers work more than earlier generations?

Longer life expectancies and a shift to more knowledge-based employment may have contributed to baby boomers working more years than earlier generations. This article compares the labour force participation (LFP) rates among five birth cohorts born between 1920 and 1965.

Among men aged 65, baby boomers had a labour force participation (LFP) rate at least 16% higher than those born before 1940. Female baby boomers achieved even higher LFP rates than previous generations, with more than 50% still participating in the labour force at age 60, and more than 25% by age 65.

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Neighbourhood characteristics of lower income families in Census Metropolitan Areas

Neighbourhoods contribute to the well-being of residents in various ways, such as social contacts with others, access to goods and services, and access to green space. This article uses a new dataset to document the neighbourhood characteristics of individuals in low-income families.

Individuals in lower-income families in the bottom 20% of the family income distribution, compared to individuals in the other 80% of the income distribution, tend to live in neighbourhoods with higher population densities, more multi-unit dwellings and lower median family incomes. They also tend to be overrepresented in neighbourhoods with better accessibility to public transit and grocery stores, neighbourhood characteristics often associated with higher population densities. In terms of crime, individuals in lower-income families are also overrepresented in higher-crime neighbourhoods.

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A sociodemographic profile of Ukrainian-Canadians

Existing Ukrainian-Canadians will play an important role in helping Ukrainians displaced by the Russian invasion settle in Canada. In the 2016 Census, about 1.36 million reported at least one of their ethnic origins as Ukrainian, close to 4% of the Canadian population. This article provides an overview of the geographic distribution of existing Ukrainian-Canadians and their socio-demographic characteristics compared to Canada's national population.

Most Ukrainian-Canadians live in Ontario, British Columbia, and the Prairies. They are less concentrated in metropolitan Toronto and Montreal and are generally well distributed across census metropolitan areas. Most Ukrainian-Canadians have lived in Canada for generations. They have higher levels of education and employment and tend to work in jobs with higher occupational skills than the national average. They also have higher median employment incomes than the national average among workers with positive earnings.

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Research article

Canadians’ use of the internet and digital technologies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

As many services and activities moved online because of pandemic restrictions, many Canadians increased their use of the internet and digital technologies. This article used data from the 2018 and 2020 Canadian Internet Use Surveys (CIUS) to categorize Canadians based on their internet usage and to compare their usage before and during COVID-19.

From 2018 to 2020, about 1.4 million Canadians shifted from the “Non-Users” or “Basic Users” categories to higher usage groups. Over the same period, the share of Canadians classified as Advanced Users increased by more than 4 percentage points, reaching 36.7% in 2020. Between these groups, the shares of Canadians classified as Intermediate Users increased by 1.3 percentage points and the share classified as Proficient Users declined by 0.9 percentage points over the period. Around 22% of Canadians were in each of these groups in 2020.

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