Every month Statistics Canada releases employment and other labour market indicators. They are much used, much discussed, and arguably much misinterpreted. Here is a short FactBook about employment, using information from January 2005 to August 2014, clarifying some of the definitions, offering some suggestions on how to use the numbers, and highlighting some of the recent trends.
Employment Factbook using Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada January 2005 to August 2014
There are three major messages:
- If you want to be “really” certain that a month to month change in employment is not just statistical noise, then it has to be pretty large, say larger than 57,000
- Employment has barely kept up with population growth during the last five years; for young people this is not even the case, there being no growth at all
- The fraction of the working age population employed has yet to return to pre-recession levels, and has been falling during the past year, which seems to be due to a fall in the employment rate of women
Any view on why employment rate of core age women has been falling so much? I see no data re rising births yet but there is a lag.
Sent from my iPad
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I haven’t looked at this in enough detail to say, but it is certainly a puzzle.