Tag Archives: manufacturing
Comparing Manufacturing Employment Growth: Canada and the USA
According to the employment numbers just released, the United States is doing quite well with the preliminary Bureau of Labour Statistics numbers pointing to the addition of 252,000 jobs in December and an unemployment rate now at 5.6 percent. Meanwhile, Canada exhibited a much weaker performance with Statistics Canada reporting that Canada lost 4,300 jobs […]
Saving Ontario
Here is an entertaining story to ring in the New Year. Apparently, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in an interview in her Queen’s Park office says that Ontario is “ready to shield Canada from the economic tsunami caused by declining oil prices and a sinking dollar.” According to the Premier, Ontario’s manufacturing heartland is gearing up […]
Canadian Manufacturing Employment: Growth and Decline (But more decline than growth)
Ontario’s budget will be presented today in the wake of new GDP numbers from Statistics Canada showing that Ontario’s real GDP growth was amongst the poorer performers in the country in 2013 (Quebec, NS, & NB were lower). Manufacturing was again singled out as one of the sectors in which Ontario is doing rather badly […]
Ontario Manufacturing: Not Getting Better Anytime Soon
The Ontario economy’s manufacturing sector was particularly hard hit by the 2009 recession. One measure of whether it is rebounding is to see if there is substantial new investment going into Ontario manufacturing in terms of capital expenditures on construction, machinery and equipment. It does not look very good.
A Lower Dollar Won’t Reverse Manufacturing’s Decline
The decline in the value of the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar is expected to provide a boost to the manufacturing sector. There is certainly no shortage of commentary on whether the fall in the dollar is the result of economic fundamentals or an engineered conspiracy designed to boost Conservative re-election prospects in […]
Why Is Manufacturing Special?
Andrew Coyne has an excellent piece in the National Post dealing with why there are no good reasons for corporate handouts in the wake of yet another round of assistance to the automobile sector. He asks what the economic rationale for this assistance is – that is, what is the economic value? He argues that […]
We Are Not Alone…
One more bit of quick evidence on manufacturing and its share of GDP – this time, international evidence. I found some data from the United Nations for the period 1970 to 2010 and calculated the manufacturing to GDP ratios for Canada, the other six G-7 countries as well as Brazil, China, India, Australia and also […]
The Decline of Manufacturing in Canada – 1926-2011: Dutch Disease?
The debate about “Dutch Disease” is focused on the relationship between natural resource export booms, currency appreciation and the decline of Canadian manufacturing. I decided it was worth hunting up some long-term data on manufacturing’s share of Canada's economy given that my economic history background tells me that over the long-term, the share of the […]
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