Economic and Social Reports, January 2025

There are four new articles available in today's release of Economic and Social Reports.

The percentage of zombie firms declined during the COVID-19 pandemic

Zombie firms are businesses that perform poorly over a long period of time without closing, and studies have shown that they can hurt the growth prospects of healthy firms within the same industry. The article "Did the COVID-19 pandemic zombify the economy? A look at zombie firms," found that following a peak of 7.1% in 2011, the share of zombie firms continued to decline during the pandemic period, reaching a low of 4.4% in 2022.

Overall, from 2019 to 2022, firms had a higher probability of exiting compared with before the pandemic, whether zombie firms (34.4% compared to 28.8%) or non-zombie firms (23.9% compared to 21.2%). Notably, the presence of business supports during the pandemic helped reduce the number of businesses that closed. However, it did so mainly by helping non-zombie firms remain non-zombies and helping zombie firms recover to become non-zombies.

The article also finds that zombie firms played a limited role in the decline in aggregate productivity over the pandemic.

Work-related injuries, illnesses and retention rates of women working in seniors' homes before the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the health and employment of Canadian women working in seniors' homes. In 2023, 6% of jobs in nursing and residential care facilities were unfilled, an increase of 4% from 2015. With the aging of the Canadian population, employee retention in seniors' homes is a concern.

To better understand what is contributing to the increase in these job vacancies, the article "Women who work in seniors' homes: Work-related injuries and illnesses and retention rates before the COVID-19 pandemic," examines employee turnover in seniors' homes among women, who comprise 85% of that workforce, prior to the pandemic. By combining data from the 2016 Census with the Longitudinal Worker File, Statistics Canada researchers looked at data from the 2016 to 2018 tax years to determine if a job departure in 2016 was permanent and also what might have led up to it.

The findings show that in 2016, up to 14% of women working in seniors' homes left the health care and social assistance sector while up to 21% left the nursing and residential care facilities sub-sector. Women who earned relatively low wages, were not unionized, or had low job tenure were generally more likely than others to leave these sectors. Immigrant women were less likely to leave than Canadian-born women.

Among Canadian-born women working in seniors' homes in the three largest provinces (Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia), those employed as nurse aides were more likely to experience injuries or illnesses in 2016 than those employed in other occupations with the same employer. Immigrant nurse aides were less likely to experience injuries or illnesses in 2016 than Canadian-born nurse aides with the same employer.

These findings provide a benchmark for future research on how these rates of departures may have changed with the onset of the pandemic and thereafter.

Inclusion in high school education in British Columbia

In British Columbia's 2015/2016 Grade 12 cohort, 84% of all students graduated high school, while 2% received an Evergreen Certificate (a school completion certificate and not a graduation credential) and 14% neither graduated nor received an Evergreen Certificate. Using the 2018 British Columbia kindergarten to Grade 12 dataset in the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform where the information about students working toward an Evergreen Certificate is uniquely available, the study "Through a diverse needs lens: High school students working toward a Dogwood Diploma or an Evergreen Certificate in British Columbia," found that these results were largely driven by students without disabilities and diverse abilities (DDAs) as the figures were 59%, 12%, and 29%, respectively, for students with DDAs.

High school completion further varied among students with DDAs. For example, while 79% of students with learning disabilities graduated high school, the figure was 6% for students with intellectual disabilities. However, 51% of students with intellectual disabilities received an Evergreen Certificate, and 43% neither graduated high school nor received a certificate. By contrast, 2% of students with behavioural disabilities or mental illness received an Evergreen Certificate and 42% neither graduated high school nor received an Evergreen Certificate.

When looking at other factors, academic achievement played a larger role than sociodemographic characteristics. For example, the likelihood of students with intellectual disabilities to graduate compared with students without DDAs decreased from 78 to 29 percentage points, when factoring in Grade 10 academic achievement. Similarly, the gap for Evergreen Certificate completion decreased from 52 to 8 percentage points.

Inclusive education is a fundamental right for children with disabilities. This study highlights an alternative high school completion pathway, especially for students with DDAs.

Updated methodology to estimate interjurisdictional employees

When workers choose to work in other regions while maintaining their primary residence in their home province or territory, they are referred to as interjurisdictional employees (IJEs). Statistics Canada has been releasing estimates of IJEs since 2021, however in the 2025 release, a new methodology will be applied to ensure that the number of IJEs sent by a given province or territory to other jurisdictions and the number of IJEs received from that province or territory by all other jurisdictions are the same.

The article "Updated methodology to estimate interjurisdictional employees," compares the old and new methodology using the IJE estimates from 2002 to 2020. The results show that by applying the new methodology, the absolute values of the total count of IJEs are reduced, but the two series shows the same trend over time. The reduction of the count measures is more significant in IJEs incoming than IJEs outgoing due to the update of counting only IJEs from their main job instead of any job as compared to the old methodology.