Employment

Employment growth was slow for most of 2003, but soared in the final four months

• Following a strong gain in employment the previous year, 2003 got off to a slow start. During the first eight months, employment growth was minimal. Over the year, the economy faced a rapidly rising Canadian dollar, as well as other events such as the war in Iraq, the SARS scare and the Ontario–U.S. power outage. However, employment surged forward during the last four months, leaving the labour market with healthy job gains for the year. On average, just over 15.7 million people were employed in 2003, up 334,000 (+2.2%) from 2002. At 62.4% of the working-age population, this was the highest annual employment rate on record.
• The most obvious change in employment in 2003 was a slump in manufacturing (-1.4%), its first significant drop since 1993, which was in sharp contrast to the strong job gains in this sector in 2002. The decline in manufacturing employment had a significant influence on the overall employment trend. In fact, employment outside manufacturing increased 2.8% from the previous year.
• There have been two periods of sustained employment decline in the last three decades in Canada—the 1981-82 and 1990-91 recessions. The decline was dramatic but shorter-lived during the recession of the early 1980s, whereas the 1990-91 drop was initially less severe but its effects lingered in the labour market for years. It wasn't until 1994 that employment returned to its pre-recession level. With the exception of 2001, when the economic growth stalled in Canada, employment increased strongly from 1996 to 2003, by an average 2.4% per year.

Enlarge chart