Canada. Public Sector Employment Down

Public sector employment on a seasonally adjusted basis edged down 0.2% between the first and second quarters of 2009 to 3.5 million employees, after growing at a steady pace since 2004.

The decline was mostly concentrated in Ontario and Quebec.

Seasonally adjusted employment statistics are available for the first time for the total public sector, the federal general government, and provincial and territorial general governments.

Employment in the federal general government continued to grow, increasing 1.1% in the second quarter to 414,000.

In the provincial and territorial general government, second-quarter employment amounted to about 355,000 employees, down 0.2%. Employment in this component has been decreasing since its most recent peak of 360,000 in the third quarter of 2008, due mainly to declines in Ontario.

Public sector employees accounted for 20.3% of total employment in Canada in the second quarter, unchanged from the previous quarter. This proportion has been slowly increasing since 2008, as total employment has been declining or growing at a slower pace than public sector employment.

Between the second quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009, non-seasonally adjusted public sector employment increased 1.7%.

This increase was spread among most components of the public sector.

The main contributors were the federal general government, where employment rose 3.8% during this period, and health and social services institutions, which increased 3.1%.

In the educational institutions, employment edged up 0.4%. This was a marked slowdown from the steady year-over-year average growth of 1.9% in this component since the second quarter of 2005.

Total public sector wages and salaries rose by 4.9% on a year-over-year basis. This increase was due mainly to retroactive pay in the wake of collective agreements for a large proportion of federal government employees.

The public sector includes all economic entities controlled by government, and comprises four major components: the three levels of government (federal, provincial and territorial and local) and each has a general government component comprising ministries, departments, agencies and non-autonomous funds, autonomous funds and organizations, and non-autonomous pension plans; provincial and territorial government also includes universities and colleges, and health and social service institutions; local government also includes school boards; and, the fourth component government business enterprises, which are institutional units controlled by government but that operate as commercial corporations in the marketplace.

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