Dimensions of Labor Market Change in Canada: Intersectoral Shifts, Jobs, and Worker Turnover

Abstract

This paper examines different aspects of labor market change. Three separate measures of change are used to examine respectively the extent of employment shifts among industries; job change measures that capture the extent of employment growth and decline as a result of changes in producer employment levels; the size of worker separations. When change is measured as the employment lost from manufacturing industries that decline in size between 1970 and 1979, the degree of reallocation is found to be relatively small. In contrast, job growth and decline at the producer level shifts large amounts, even in the long run. Over the period 1970 to 1981, about 3.6 percent of manufacturing jobs were lost annually due to the decline of producers. The largest amount of change is found when worker separations are measured. Between 1978 and 1986, the number of permanent separations was, on average, equal to more than 20 percent of the number of people holding jobs in the manufacturing sector.