Labour Productivity Measures - Provinces and Territories (Annual)

Detailed information for 2022

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

5103

The annual provincial program of Canadian Productivity Accounts produces annual data on jobs, hours worked, labour compensation and a variety of related variables, such as labour productivity and unit labour cost by province and territory.

Data release - May 19, 2023 (preliminary); February 9, 2024 (Hours worked and labour productivity) (revised data)

Description

The annual provincial program of Canadian Productivity Accounts (CPA) produces annual data on jobs, hours worked, labour compensation and a variety of related variables, such as labour productivity and unit labour cost by province and territory.

The labour statistics produced by the provincial program of the CPA shed light on the labour market performance of provinces and territories and allow for the construction of provincial and territorial productivity series. Provincial and territorial labour statistics are produced by integrating different data sources in order to generate estimates consistent with the Canadian System of National Accounts. These estimates constitute the benchmark of the quarterly program of the CPA (see Labour Productivity Measures - National [Quarterly], record number 5042). These labour statistics are used by analysts, policymakers and researchers to assess provincial and territorial economic performances and their contribution at the national level.

Statistical activity

The Canadian System of Macroeconomic Accounts provides a conceptually integrated statistical framework for studying the state and behaviour of the Canadian economy. The accounts are centered on the measurement of activities associated with the production of goods and services, the sales of goods and services in final markets, the supporting financial transactions and the resulting wealth positions.

The Canadian Productivity Accounts (CPA) are responsible for producing, analyzing and disseminating Statistics Canada's official data on productivity and for the production and integration of data on employment, hours worked and capital services consistent with the System of National Economic Accounts. To this end, the CPA comprises three programs. The quarterly program provides current estimates on labour productivity and labour costs at the aggregate level for 15 industry groups. The annual multifactor productivity program provides yearly estimates on multifactor productivity and related measures (output, capital input, labour input and intermediate inputs) as they apply to the major sectors of the economy and to industries at the national and provincial levels (see Productivity Measures and Related Variables - National and Provincial [Annual], record number 1402). Lastly, the annual provincial program, as an integral part of the provincial and territorial economic accounts, provides estimates of employment, hours worked, labour productivity and labour costs at the industry level for each province and territory (see Labour Productivity Measures - Provinces and Territories [Annual], record number 5103).

Provincial and territorial accounts - The System of National Economic Accounts disseminates a wide variety of data at the provincial and territorial level on topics such as the environment, government finance, gross domestic product (GDP) and its components, GDP by industry, tourism and labour productivity.

Subjects

  • Economic accounts
  • Gross domestic product
  • Income and expenditure accounts
  • Labour
  • Productivity accounts

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The conceptual universe of the provincial program encompasses:
- ten provinces, three territories and employees of the federal public service working abroad;
- three job categories (paid workers, self-employed with paid help and self-employed without paid help);
- 221 industries (W-North American Industry Classification System) and their aggregates L, M and S of the System of National Accounts;
- the economy as a whole by distinguishing the business sector from the Non-profit sector and the different levels of government (aboriginal, local, provincial, territorial and federal).

Instrument design

This methodology does not apply.

Sampling

This methodology does not apply.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: January through December

Data are extracted from administrative files and derived from other Statistics Canada surveys and/or other sources.

More precisely:

1) The Labour Force Survey (record number 3701) data from which industrie's average hours per job are estimated as well as annual benchmarks for jobs and hours.

2) The Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (record number 2612) data which allows for an industry allocation of paid workers' jobs and wages.

3) The Survey on Labour and Income Dynamics (record number 3889) used, until recently, to provide statistics about multiple job holders.

4) The census data (see Census of Population, record number 3901) allow for an industry allocation of self-employed workers and an estimation of their income. These data are also used in estimating interprovincial flows of workers and in producing annual benchmarks for the rate of activity in the territories.

5) The Demography Division (see Estimates of population, by marital status or legal marital Status, age and sex for July 1, Canada, provinces and territories, record number 3605) provides estimates of the population in the territories. These estimates are linked to data from the Labour Force Survey and the Census, which allows to derive employment benchmarks for these territories.

6) The time-use cycle data of the General Social Survey (record number 4504), available every five years, allows us to impute hours lost due to holidays that are never captured by the Labour Force Survey. This survey is also used to derive a weekly distribution of hours worked for each industry.

7) Provincial, territorial and national estimates of the gross domestic product (GDP) and of the labour compensation by industry produced by the Industry Accounts Division (see Gross Domestic Product by Industry - Provincial and Territorial [Annual], record number 1303) are used to identify the universe, extract annual benchmarks of wages and build real GDP by province or territory and business industry.

8) The National Economic Accounts Division prepares current data on labour compensation (see Provincial and Territorial Gross Domestic Product by Income and by Expenditure Accounts, record number 1902) which are used as benchmarks for years not covered by the Industry Accounts Division.

9) Tax data slips (T4s - Statement of Remuneration Paid, T1 - Income Tax Return and PD7 - Statement of account for current source deductions) collected by the Canada Revenue Agency are used to link wages' microdata to their benchmarks and to fine-tune the industry allocation of self-employed workers, the interprovincial flows of workers and statistics on multiple job holders.

10) Until reference year 2012, the Manufacturing and Wholesale Trade Division used to prepare data on the number of jobs in the manufacturing industries (see Annual Survey of Manufacturing and Logging Industries, record number 2103).

11) The Environment and Energy Statistics Division provides information on employment in coal mines (see Monthly Coal Supply and Disposition Survey, record number 2147).

12) Employment and Social Development Canada provides data related to labour strikes to assist in estimating actual hours worked.

13) Natural Resources Canada provides information on employment and wages in metal and non-metal mines (except coal).

14) Data from the U.S. Census Bureau are used for estimating the daily flow of American residents working in Canada.

Error detection

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Imputation

In order to prepare statistics by job (average hours, share of full-time workers in jobs, hours, wages, etc.), optimal imputation rules have been developed for each category of workers in provincial and industrial dimensions. The imputation is built from geographic and industrial aggregations and is introduced before the estimation in order to compensate for potential weaknesses in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) sample. Error variance estimations have been provided by the Modern Statistical Methods and Data Science Branch for the LFS data. This allowed to rank the "needs in sampling" of various industries and provinces. The imputations are related to hours worked as well as hours lost due to holidays. Similar imputations were used with data from the Survey on Labour and Income Dynamics. On another hand, an imputation is required for self-employed workers whose financial statements usually do not allow one to split their benefit between their own labour and capital. Their labour income is therefore estimated by imputation. For this purpose, census data, which are conceptually close to the ones needed, are used to establish industry adjustment parameters between hourly rates of paid workers and those of self-employed workers.

Estimation

There is no unique labour statistics program at Statistics Canada that provides a measure of hours worked that is consistent, both conceptually and with respect to coverage, with the Canadian System of National Accounts. However, the Canadian Productivity Accounts (CPA) fill this void. Although the labour statistics produced by the CPAs are the result of the integration of data from various surveys and statistical programs, they can be reconciled with the aggregate series produced by the Labour Force Survey (LFS).

First of all, we estimate average hours worked or paid by type of work (full-time or part-time work) and the specific weights of these types per class of worker. These estimates combine imputations and actual samples according to a weighting system that takes into account minimum sample sizes requirements. These vary from 5 to 10 for average hours and from 10 to 20 for full-time employment shares.

After that, estimations of employment by province and industry are produced. For paid workers, the estimations involve a linkage between T4 tax data and the PD7 files whose biggest part is edited by the Labour Statistics Division. For self-employment, industry allocation derived from census data is fine-tuned with T1 data information.

Finally, the volume of hours worked by type of work and of industry is estimated, for each province and territory, by combining estimations of jobs and of hours worked per job.

This procedure is applied both at the most detailed level available and at a more aggregate level (with a mixture of the North American Industry Classification System two or three digits codes). This aggregate level minimizes the impact of imputation because its purpose is to derive annual benchmarks of hours by province and territory to which detailed estimations are then benchmarked.

The estimation of annual employment benchmarks of the provinces involves some transformations on total employment from the LFS; we must first remove unpaid absentees, then add secondary jobs of multiple job holders and finally add an estimation of the employment in First Nations reserves (which are not covered by the LFS). It is worth noting that in the territories, employment estimates are derived from demographic data combined with LFS's rate of activity. This rate is itself benchmarked to the census data. After this, we estimate the interprovincial and international flows of workers in order to bring employment benchmarks, not on the province of residence basis but rather, on the province of work level. Here again, census and T4 data as well as some data from the U.S. Census Bureau are combined. Finally, the jobs benchmarks must be completed with 2 series not covered by the LFS: the Canadian Armed Forces members and the federal government employees working outside Canada. For this purpose, we use data from the Labour Statistics Division.

For paid workers, the final industry allocation involves a trade-off between annual wage rates and employment since wages are binding and are usually part of gross domestic product estimations. The trade-off is done in such a way that the final wage rate (net from some components not captured by the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours) is never far from the initial wage rate, the gap never exceeding 6%.

For more details, see additional documentation below and see "Annual Measures of the Volume of Work Consistent with the SNA: the Canadian Experience", Economic Analysis Methodology Paper Series: National Accounts, Statistics Canada Catalogue number 11F0026M2005005.

Quality evaluation

Prior to publication, results by province and territory are analyzed for compatibility and a review of general economic conditions and historical trends is conducted. Given that the Labour Productivity Measures are compiled from a variety of diverse data sources, it is not possible to produce typical survey-based quality indicators such as coefficients of variation or survey response rates. Instead, data are analyzed for time series consistency, to establish links with current economic events, and to insure the coherence in source data.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any data which would divulge information obtained under the Statistics Act that relates to any identifiable person, business or organization without the prior knowledge or the consent in writing of that person, business or organization. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

The Canadian Productivity Accounts use the confidentiality model developed by the Industry Accounts Division. This model uses a method which suppresses sensitive cells.

Data are also suppressed if they have been assigned an unreliable quality rating.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

Revisions - Annual statistics are published twice a year. Preliminary estimates are released in the spring following the end of the reference period, while revised estimates are published in the fall of the same year. The fall release also comprises revisions of estimates from the three previous years. Estimates are not normally revised again except when a historical revision is carried out. Statistical revisions are carried out in order to incorporate the most recent information from surveys, taxation statistics, public accounts, censuses, etc., and to take into account new concepts or definitions, new methodologies and data sources, as well as the annual benchmarking process of the input-output accounts. Usually, the release dates and the revisions of the labour statistics are synchronized with the other components of the provincial and territorial economic accounts.

Seasonal adjustment - This is not necessary given that the calculations of labour productivity and its related variables by industry at the provincial and territorial level are only performed on an annual basis.

Data accuracy

The approach used is based on expert judgment. The accuracy of the data is based on the quality of the data sources and the extent to which the series are affected by unexplained breaks (if applicable).

Based on this principle, data produced by the provincial program are deemed fairly accurate for the purpose at hand.

Documentation

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