Statistics Canada
www.statcan.gc.ca
Common menu bar links
Call centres: A growth industry
Archived Content
Information identified as archived is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been altered or updated since it was archived. Please contact us to request a format other than those available.
The annual growth in Canada’s telephone call centres outstripped overall economic expansion by more than four times from 1998 to 2006. The industry’s average revenue growth in that period was 28% per year, compared with 6% for the economy in general. That marks a climb in revenues from $424 million to $2.76 billion, which represents 48% of the revenues for the entire business support services industry.
Call centre revenue growth has been accompanied by employment growth. From 1991 to 2005, employment climbed 13% in the goods-producing sector and 25% in the services sector as a whole; employment in business support services rose 190%.
Business services used to be provided where they are consumed, but advances in information and communications technologies allow many services to be provided over longer distances. During the 1990s and early 2000s, more telephone call centres set up shop in areas with higher unemployment and a relatively educated population, often in smaller cities.
Canada’s telephone call centres are most prevalent in the eastern provinces and in Ontario. Ontario centres generated two-thirds of 2006 call centre revenues. Nationwide, there were an average 6.8 call centres per 10,000 business establishments in 2006.However, the averages were 15.8 for Prince Edward Island, 13.1 for New Brunswick and 8.4 for Ontario.
From 2000 to 2005, there was a net increase of 96 call centres in Canada: the number of small call centres (0 to 10 employees) decreased by 73; but the number of medium-sized centres (10 to 49 employees) grew by 72 and large call centres (50 employees or more) increased by 97.
