Tag: Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada cuts long data short: another longitudinal survey is cancelled

~ MilesCorak ~ 28 Comments

The Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics died this morning.

The notice was given quietly by Statistics Canada: “This is the last release of longitudinal data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. Effective with next year’s release of 2011 data, only cross-sectional estimates will be available.”

A short, simple, and slightly obtuse, statement of a profound change for the user community and Canadians in general.

When I recently described the loss of a similar survey to a co-author over the telephone, she paused and said with sadness, “Ahhh…,” as if a friend had died.

There is no doubt that Statistics Canada also recognizes the value of this survey, and others like it. But there are important challenges in managing the information derived from so-called “longitudinal surveys”, and Canadians might be wondering whether or not they are being sold short.

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The gap between US and Canadian unemployment rates is bigger than it appears

~ MilesCorak ~ 22 Comments

At 8.1% the unemployment rate in the United States is about one percentage point above the 7.2% currently reported for Canada, but this gap would be almost two percentage points if the Canadian rate was measured in the same way as the American.

This revealing picture from the recent Canadian federal government Budget paints a more accurate portrait by using unemployment rates defined in a similar way across the two countries.

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The burden of unemployment is worse than Statistics Canada’s official number suggests

~ MilesCorak ~ 13 Comments

This morning Statistics Canada reported that the unemployment rate increased to 7.6%, confirming a rising trend since July of last year and still significantly above the low of about 6% just before the recession took hold in the autumn of 2008.

This statistic is probably the closest a number can come to having a human face; it relates directly to the hardship Canadians experience in providing for their families, saving for their retirement, and just meeting their day-to-day needs.

But in the end we can’t clearly see the faces of real people behind this number, which at best is an incomplete picture of waste and hardship.

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Facts about the labour market, the hidden and the missing

~ MilesCorak ~ 10 Comments

This morning Statistics Canada released–as it does on the first Friday of every month–estimates of employment and unemployment for the previous month.

As usual the headline number is the change in the number of employed, and the Agency’s press release announces that “Following two months of declines, employment rose slightly in December, up 18,000.”

But this masks as much as it reveals.

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Three questions to ask the Minister of Finance

~ MilesCorak ~ 15 Comments

“Jobs and Growth the Priorities as Minister Flaherty Hosts Pre-Budget Consultations”, screams the title of a press release from the Department of Finance issued about a month ago.

Jim Flaherty wants to hear from Canadians about how he can maintain the federal government’s “focus on jobs and economic growth while reducing the deficit.”

But this week is a particularly good time to first pose a few questions to him in the hope of clarifying some facts about jobs, unemployment, and the role of government policy.

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