Employment, by industry

Three in 10 workers are employed in trade or manufacturing

• Retail and wholesale trade is the largest sector in the country, employing over 2.5 million people in 2003. Among these people, approximately three-quarters work in retail trade. With a surge in consumer spending in recent years, both retail sales and trade employment have boomed. Many retail and wholesale jobs are held by youth and adult women. Since 1997, the number of jobs in retail and wholesale trade grew quickly, at an average 2.6% per year.
• Manufacturing lost ground since 1990 as Canada's largest employer and now ranks second to trade. However, manufacturing is presently tops in terms of number of hours worked. In 2003, factory workers put in an average of 84 million hours per week (or 36.4 hours per worker), compared with 77 million in retail and wholesale trade (31.4 hours per worker). Wages were also significantly higher in manufacturing: the average hourly wage for a factory job was $18.92, compared with $13.73 in trade.
• In 2003, health care and social assistance ranked as the third largest employer, the ranking it has had year after year since 1976. The share of total employment for this sector was 11% in 2003 compared with about 8% in 1976. Other than a brief period in the mid-1990s when employment levelled off, job growth has been continuous in health care and social assistance. Health care spending in Canada has increased considerably in the last few years, and along with the added spending, so too has the number of jobs. In 2003, 1.7 million people were working in health care and social assistance.

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