Archive for the ‘economy’ Category

Yesterday, Stats Can posted the results of December’s Survey of Manufacturing. It turns out that in December manufacturing sales increased by 0.4% to $45.4 billion.

A breakdown of industries is as follows:

• Primary metal: increased by 3.9%
• Petroleum and Coal products: increased by 1.5%
• Chemical products: increased 2.3%
• Food: increased 0.9%
• Aerospace product and parts: fell 16.6%
• Machinery: fell 2%
• Computer and Electronic products: fell 3%

According to a new report published by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI), Canada is not doing as well as we have in the past when it comes to the agriculture industry. The report suggests that Canada’s agricultural policy needs to be revisited and overhauled in order to compensate for this drop in the industry.

In 2009 alone, exports fell by 9 per cent while imports rose by 2 per cent; while Canada used to be the third largest exporter of food products, it has now fallen to the seventh largest. If things keep changing like this, it could have a huge impact on our economy, as the agriculture industry currently generates two million jobs and accounts for 8.2 per cent of the gross domestic product.

CAPI is calling for a overhaul that will create a long-term plan to better this industry, with objectives and targets that can be met. They would also like to see different sectors working more closely with the agriculture industry (ie – the health, transportation and environmental industries).

One of the largest improvements CAPI would like to see is in relation to innovation in the agriculture industry. Recently, R&D in the agriculture industry has decreased drastically, but in order to make the industry more able to face future challenges, more innovation must be done to reduce risk and create opportunities in agriculture.

The full report can be found on the CAPI website.

Today, StatsCan released January’s Labour Force Survey. They stated that:

Employment rose for the second consecutive month in January, with a gain of 69,000. At the same time, the unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points to 7.8%, as more people searched for work. Compared with January 2010, employment was up 1.9% (+327,000).
Source

The provinces that saw the employment gains were Alberta, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and PEI. Both full-time and part-time employment rose – part-time by 2.8% and full-time by 1.7%.

The majority of the growth happened in the service sectors, public administration, and the agriculture industry. Manufacturing stayed approximately the same between December and January.

Some areas where employment fell in January include the transportation industry, as well as accommodation and food services.

On Thursday, the Bank of Canada released the results of one of it’s semi-annual assessments. The results? Canada’s financial system is still at risk – in fact, even more so than it was six months ago. They have suggested a number of reasons as to why this may be so:

• Debt concerns in Europe could highly effect our financial system
• The economic recovery is happening at a much slower pace than we had originally anticipated
• The debt the average household is taking on is growing at a rate much faster than the rate of income growth
• Steps agreed on by the G20 to narrow the trade imbalances among countries (imbalances that made the 2008 financial crisis affect so many countries) are being implemented at a very slow rate

Source

On Friday, StatsCan released November’s Labour Force Survey. November saw the lowest unemployment rate since January 2009 – with 15,000 new jobs added that month, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.6%.

This is 1.9% higher than it was in November, 2009 – since then, part-time employment has grown by 4% and full-time employment has grown 1.4%.

Unfortunately, employment in the manufacturing sector fell 1.6% from what it was in the previous month, and fell 2.6% from where it was in November 2009. The manufacturing sector’s share of total employment is now at an employment rate of 10%, the lowest since the early 2000′s.