Part Time Employment Chg

Part Time Employment Chg is the monthly change in part-time employment from the Labour Force Survey (LFS, Canada's monthly household survey). Statistics Canada (StatCan, national statistics agency) conducts it. Part-time means usually working less than 30 hours per week at the main or only job (job with most usual hours).

It covers people aged 15 years and older living in Canada, excluding people on reserves, full-time military, institutions, and territories from national totals. The survey began in 1945 and became a monthly survey in 1952. It is a net estimate (gains minus losses), not payroll jobs (employer job counts) or gross hiring flows.

The reference week (survey week with the 15th) runs Sunday to Saturday, moving to the second week in December and sometimes November before Christmas. Collection usually covers the 10 days after that week, then Statistics Canada publishes at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, Monday to Friday.

Release usually falls on the first or second Friday of the next month in The Daily (official bulletin). Tables cover age, sex, province, industry, occupation, class of worker, hours, and wages.

Seasonally adjusted estimates are revised yearly for the prior 3 years, with census rebasing (population updates) about every 5 years. The sample is redesigned about every 10 years, and only moves significant at 68% confidence are highlighted.

Part-time change reflects who works short usual hours and where those jobs sit.

• Full-time employment: people usually working 30 hours or more; it combines with part-time into total employment.
• Voluntary part-time: people choosing less than 30 hours for school, family, illness, or preference.
• Involuntary part-time: people working less than 30 hours who want 30 hours or more because of business conditions or unavailable hours. They are 15 to 25 percent of part-time workers.
• Age, sex and geography: splits results by age and sex groups, provinces, and large cities; territories sit outside national totals.
• Industry, occupation and class of worker: splits results by industry, occupation, and class of worker: public employees, private employees, and the self-employed.
• Hours and wages: covers average usual and actual hours and wages without seasonal adjustment.

In September 2023 (released 6 October 2023) total employment rose 64,000 (+0.3%) to 20,270,000. Part-time work rose 48,000 (+1.3%), driving about 75% of the net gain. Part-time growth since the start of that year reached +1.9%, outpacing full-time growth at +1.0%.

The involuntary part-time rate (share wanting full-time work) stood at 17.5%, up from 16.5% in September 2022. Total hours worked were flat, and hourly wages grew 5.0% from a year earlier. Education and transport added jobs while construction shed them, and Quebec and British Columbia gained while Alberta lost jobs.

1. Employed person: A person counts if they did any paid work in the reference week (survey week) or had a job but were absent.
2. Main job: For multiple jobholders, the job with the most usual hours sets full-time or part-time status.
3. Part-time cutoff: Less than 30 hours of usual weekly work means part-time; 30 hours or more means full-time.
4. Weighting (scaling sample to population): Each respondent represents many people by selection chance, adjusted for non-response and matched to population totals.
5. Seasonal adjustment (removing regular seasonal patterns): Method X-12-ARIMA in X-13ARIMA-SEATS (seasonal software) removes seasonal and calendar effects, then totals are raked (forced to match benchmarks).
6. Monthly change: Subtract the prior reference month seasonally adjusted level from the current level; divide by that level and multiply by 100 for % change. For example, 3,748,000 minus 3,700,000 equals +48,000, or +1.3% (+48,000 divided by 3,700,000 times 100).