Project Link

Project Link

Piecing together recent Canadian economic history

The main Project Link data are now in one Excel file, with definitions and sources. The working files used to calculate these numbers are available to anyone who asks. The most recent update is based on data available in September 2022.

There are also estimates for the distribution of income in Canada for each year over the period 1944-2010. These estimates will not be updated; see here for a description of how they were calculated.

ï¿½ Original data (taken from Taxation Statistics)

ï¿½ Estimates for income percentiles, quantiles and income shares and other statistics.

Monthly data

Coincident indicators:

Variable	Start date	Vector
GDP	January 1961	v65201210
Employment (LFS)	January 1946	v2062811
Unemployment rate	January 1946	v2062815
Employment (SEPH)	January 1946	v79310773
Weekly earnings (SEPH)	January 1946	v54026327
Consumer Price Index	January 1946	v41690914
Exchange rate	January 1946	v111666275
Manufacturing sales	January 1956	v123263908
Exports	January 1968	v1001783953
Imports	January 1968	v1001783939
Retail trade	January 1972	v115117063

Labour Force Survey, start date November 1945:

	15 and over
	Both sexes	Men	Women
Labour Force	v2062810	v2062819	v2062828
Employment	v2062811	v2062820	v2062829
Employment rates	v2062817	v2062826	v2062835
Unemployment rates	v2062815	v2062824	v2062833
Participation rates	v2062816	v2062825	v2062834

Labour Force Survey, start date January 1953:

	25 to 54 years
	Both sexes	Men	Women
Labour Force	v2062945	v2062954	v2062963
Employment	v2062946	v2062955	v2062964
Employment rates	v2062952	v2062961	v2062970
Unemployment rates	v2062950	v2062959	v2062968
Participation rates	v2062951	v2062960	v2062969

Quarterly data

Economic Accounts; Expenditure approach - chained 2012 dollars (real). Start date 1947Q1

Variable	Vectors
GDP	v62305752
Consumption expenditures	v62305724 + v62305730
Investment expenditures	v62305733 + v62305739 + v62305742
Government expenditures	v62305731 + v62305740 + v62305741 - v62305742
Exports	v62305745
Imports	v62305748

Economic Accounts; Expenditure approach - current dollars (nominal). Start date 1947Q1

Variable	Vectors
GDP	v62305783
Consumption expenditures	v62305755 + v62305761
Investment expenditures	v62305764 + v62305770 + v62305773
Government expenditures	v62305762 + v62305771 + v62305772 - v62305742
Exports	v62305776
Imports	v62305779

Economic Accounts; Income approach

Variable	Vectors
Gross National Income	v62468852
Gross Domestic Income	Explainer
Trading gain	Explainer
Terms of trade	(v62305776/ v62305745)/( v62305779/ v62305748)
Net National Income	v62468848
Compensation of employees	v62295549
Disposable income	v62305981
GFDE deflator	Explainer
GDP deflator	v62305783/v62305752

Balance of Payments; Current Account; Receipts, payments and balances. Start date 1946Q1

Variable	Vectors
Total	v61915244, v61915273, v61915304
Goods and services	v61915245, v61915274, v61915305
Investment income	v61915255, v61915283, v61915315

Why this site exists

As anyone who works with Canadian economic time series data is aware, Statistics Canada has a frustrating habit of starting new time series with new definitions and/or new methodologies and not updating historical data. As a result, recent Canadian economic history consists largely of discontinued fragments in the ï¿½Archived Seriesï¿½ sections of Statistics Canadaï¿½s data base. This is an effort to piece some of those fragments together to produce rough-and-ready, consistent time series for some important economic variables.

Data sources

All source data were originally published by Statistics Canada. So far, I have used data taken from Statistics Canadaï¿½s data tables, the Monthly Review of Business Statistics, the Canadian Statistical Review, Historical Labour Force Statistics, the Labour Force Survey, the Bank of Canada Review, and the Bank of Canadaï¿½s Statistical Summary.

Methodology

The basic technique is to link two series based on their relative values on the earliest observation in which they overlap. Suppose A is the old series and B is the new series:

A1	A2	A3	A4	A5	A6
			B4	B5	B6	B7	B8	B9	B10

These would be linked at the 4^th observation:

A1	A2	A3	A4	A5	A6
A1*(B4/A4)	A2*(B4/A4)	A3*(B4/A4)	B4	B5	B6	B7	B8	B9	B10

The assumption being made here is that the only difference between A and B is one of scale: the period-to-period growth rates were not affected by the transition from series A to series B. This assumption is never strictly true, so no great claims about the precision of these estimates are made here. But it is to be hoped that they are better than nothing.

Data presentation

All data are scaled to be consistent with the most recent data being updated by Statistics Canada. While I will try to keep these data updated as often as I can, you should be able to use the Statistics Canada vector number (for example, v65201210 is the current estimate for monthly GDP) to do updates on your own.

Note: the most recent observations posted here are often subject to revision. If youï¿½re updating these series using the most recent Statistics Canada data, download at least 5 yearsï¿½ worth of historical data to make sure youï¿½ve captured all of the latest revisions.

Some notes on seasonal adjustment

All data are seasonally adjusted, either by me or by Statistics Canada.

Statistics Canadaï¿½s adjusted CPI series starts in 1992, but the unadjusted series goes back much further. I reverse-engineered a two-sided X24 filter that transformed the unadjusted data into something that closely fits the adjusted series, and this filter was used to adjust CPI data before 1992.

Earnings data before 1983 are not adjusted by Statistics Canada. I used monthly dummies to adjust for seasonality.

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blog posts on Project Link:

ï¿½ 2016: Project Link: Piecing together recent Canadian economic history

ï¿½ 2017: Project Link update: Labour Force Survey, 1953-2017

ï¿½ 2018: Project Link update

ï¿½ 2019: Project Link update

Comments / Suggestions / Requests

This is an ongoing project. Advice and constructive criticism are welcome: [email protected]