Incomes Flat in “Recovery Year” of 2010
Today’s Statscan release of income data for 2010 allow for a backward glance at the state of the recovery. What is most striking is that – following two years of…
StatCan
Labour Market Stalls
Canada’s job market stalled in May. Employment edged up by 7,700, almost all of it part-time. In fact, the number of employees paid by Canadian employers fell by 15,600. Total…
GDP: Austerity Bites
Canada’s economy grew by half a percent in the first quarter of 2012, staying on pace for unimpressive annual growth of two percent. The good news is that business investment…
Key EI Data No Longer Available
As Heather Scoffield of Canadian Press reports here, Statistics Canada are no longer publishing key EI data because HRSDC have stopped providing it. Data on the dollar value of EI…
Saskatchewan Manufacturing Hits the Wall
Premier Brad Wall was Tweeting about today’s Statistics Canada report of an uptick in national manufacturing sales in March. It is an odd report for him to trumpet, given that…
Jobs: Ontario Left Behind
Statistics Canada reported today that April was another good month for the labour market. The Canadian economy added 58,200 jobs, most of which were full-time and all of which were…
Corak in Context
Professor Miles Corak had a post on The Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab yesterday comparing measures of unemployment in Canada and the U.S. I remember learning in Economics 100 that…
Canadian Mining and Manufacturing Stumble
Statistics Canada reported today that the economy shrank in February, driven by declines in resource extraction and manufacturing. Oil and gas extraction as well as hard-rock mining decreased due to…
Deflating the Monetary Hawks
Canada’s business press has recently been filled with speculation that the Bank of Canada may soon hike interest rates based on its somewhat more optimistic economic outlook. But today’s Consumer…
Social Statistics: Ignorance Is Bliss
Pretty soon asking even the most basic social policy questions will require huge amounts of investment in primary research. Regularly published statistical reports and summaries are disappearing by the minute.…
Job Gains in March: An Aberration?
Coming after several months of flat or falling job growth, the large jump in employment in March – up 82,300 – has prompted concerns that it could be a statistical…
Real Unemployment Rate = 11.3%
Statistics Canada reported significant employment growth today for the first time in six months. As Andrew has already noted, welcome strength in March does not make up for the five…
Taxing Ontario’s Richest
Ontario’s NDP was out today with a Robin Hood proposal to collect more provincial tax from personal incomes in excess of half a million dollars. The approximately $570 million of…
The Assault on Statistics Canada Continues
Soon we will live in a world where we lack an empirical basis for policy and political debate, leaving everyone even more free to invent their own facts. The Globe…
Lockouts Almost Derail GDP Growth
Statistics Canada reported today that economic growth dropped to a bare 0.1% in January. The New Year began with Rio Tinto locking out former Alcan employees at Alma, Quebec, and…
Inflation Central
Statistics Canada reported today that consumer prices edged up by 0.1% in February on a seasonally-adjusted basis, bringing the annual inflation rate to 2.6% and the core inflation rate to…
Below 40% of the Unemployed Get EI
Statistics Canada reported today that 12,400 more Canadians received Employment Insurance (EI) regular benefits in January. The increase in recipients reflected higher unemployment. Indeed, the proportion of jobless workers receiving…
Labour Force Exodus
Statistics Canada reported this morning that 38,000 people gave up looking for work in February. The official unemployment rate fell because these Canadians were no longer counted as being unemployed.…
Santa Claus Delivers a Positive Quarter Despite Corporate Scrooges
The Month: Christmas Gift Canada’s economy was buoyed by Christmas cheer as a December bounce more than offset slight declines in October and November to turn the fourth quarter positive.…
EI Shrank by 100,000 in 2011
Statistics Canada reported today that the number of Canadians receiving Employment Insurance rose by 4,230 in December, a month in which unemployment rose by 6,100. The proportion of unemployed workers…