This paper highlights recent developments in self-employment in Canada and explores its relationship to unemployment/full-time paid-employment. There are now two and a half million Canadians working at their own businesses, amounting to 16.2% of the total labour force or accounting for 17.8% of...

This paper outlines the structure of payroll taxes and documents evidence on the level, growth and role of each component over the last three decades for Canada and for each province. Levied by both the federal and provincial governments, payroll taxes in Canada include four major components: i)...

This paper documents job turnover and labour market adjustment activities in the Ontario economy from 1978 to 1993. The following highlights the major findings. Both the permanent layoff rate and the total permanent separation rate vary substantially from one industry to another. In 1992, the...

Canadians are increasingly concerned about permanent layoffs, as many feel job instability and the possibility of job loss has increased in the 1990s. Governments, confronted with a large number of permanent layoffs each year, need to know how to respond to improve labour adjustment and the...

This paper investigates the inter-provincial labour mobility behaviour of immigrants relative to that of native-born Canadians. Foreign-born Canadians differ a great deal from their domestically-born counterparts. The foreign-born population is geographically concentrated in a few provinces and...

This paper highlights recent trends in employment insurance (formerly unemployment insurance). It also provides a review of the historic evolution of the employment insurance program. The following summarizes the main results. The EI system has turned from large deficits prior to 1993, to...

The objectives of this paper are to determine the empirical relationships between economic performance, transfers and low income among Canadian families, and to explore whether these relationships have changed over time. Similar recent studies in the US find a weakening in the relationship...

Using survey data, this paper investigates problems that firms in the Canadian manufacturing sector face in their decision to adopt advanced technology. The data show that while the use of advanced technology is relatively important (users account for over 80% of all shipments), it is not...

This paper i) documents the extent and cyclicality of self-employment entry and exit flows; ii) explores transitions to and from self-employment; and iii) investigates the influence of individual characteristics and labour market experience as well as macroeconomic conditions on the probability...

This paper starts from the definition that "structural unemployment occurs when workers are unable to fill available jobs because they lack the skills, do not live where jobs are available, or are unwilling to work at the wage rate offered in the market." This implies that the number of...