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Payroll employment, earnings and hours

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The Daily


Thursday, April 26, 2007
February 2007 (preliminary)

The average weekly earnings of payroll employees (seasonally adjusted) increased $1.06 (+0.1%) from a month earlier to $764.12 in February. The year-to-date growth is 3.1%. This rate of change is calculated as the average of the first two months of 2007 compared to the average of the same two months in 2006.

In Canada's largest industrial sectors, year-to-date growth reached 3.1% in health and social assistance, 2.8% in manufacturing, 0.8% in retail trade and 0.4% in educational services.

Among the provinces, Alberta continues to lead earnings growth with a year-to-date increase of 5.2%.

In Canada, there was an increase of 7,900 (+0.1%) payroll jobs in February, making the total estimated number of payroll jobs 14,252,400. Nova Scotia (+0.6%), Alberta (+0.5%), and Prince Edward Island (+0.5%) recorded the largest percentage increases in employment for February. The largest absolute increases were in Alberta (+8,500) and British Columbia (+5,200).

The average hourly earnings for hourly paid employees fell 0.4% in February to $18.85. The average weekly hours for hourly paid employees declined 0.6% to 31.3 hours.

Available on CANSIM: tables 281-0023 to 281-0046.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 2612.

Detailed industry data, data by size of enterprise based on employment, and other labour market indicators will be available soon in the monthly publication Employment, Earnings and Hours (72-002-XIB, free).

Data on payroll employment, earnings and hours for March will be released on May 29.

For general information or to order data, contact Client Services (toll-free 1-866-873-8788; 613-951-4090; fax: 613-951-2869; labour@statcan.gc.ca). To enquire about revisions, concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Peter Lorenz (613-951-4167), Labour Statistics Division.

Tables. Table(s).