Rates and Statistics

Wages and costs

Definitions

Labour Force Survey - average hourly earnings (unweighted)
Gross payments before taxes and other deductions. The data cover both hourly rated and salaried employees and all industries except agriculture, fishing and trapping, private household services, religious organizations and the military. Learn more

Wage settlements - Private sector
Average annual percentage increase in base rates over the term of the agreement in settlements negotiated during a period. These data cover bargaining units with 500 or more employees. The average is obtained by weighing individual settlements by the number of employees affected.

Compensation per hour - Business sector
Labour compensation includes all payments in cash or in kind made by domestic producers to persons as remuneration for work. This includes salaries and supplementary labour income of paid workers, plus an imputed labour income of self-employed workers.

Unit labour costs
Unit labour cost is the labour cost per unit of output. It is calculated as the ratio of labour compensation to real value added. It is also the equivalent of the ratio of labour compensation per hour worked to labour productivity. The unit labour cost will increase when hourly compensation rises faster than labour productivity.

Bank of Canada Commodity Price Index
The Bank of Canada Commodity Price Index is a fixed-weight index of the spot or transaction prices of 23 commodities produced in Canada and sold in world markets. The weight of each commodity in the total index and in the subindexes is based on the average value of Canadian production of the commodity over the 1988-99 period. Learn more