Labour force participation in Canada, 1976-present

This document provides a brief statistical analysis of labour force participation in Canada since January 1976.

The labour force participation rate is defined as: LFP rate = (labour force) / (population) * 100% S_LFrate = [0%, 100%], it is a continuous variable.

Summary statistics

This section reports some basic summary statistics for labour force participation.

The results shows that the overall range of the LFP rate is relatively narrow, from 60.07(minimum) to 67.73(maximum). Mean (65.72) < Median (65.82), with the minimum (60.07) is 5.75% lower than the median, but the maximum (67.73) is just 1.91% higher than it, which indicates that the distribution of LFP rate is slightly left-skewed. IQR = Q3 - Q1 = 66.82 - 65.11 = 1.71, which measures the spread of the middle 50% of LFP rate, half of all 600 months, are fall in a narrow band of less than 1.8%, which indicates that the LFP rate in Canada is relatively stable.

## SUMMARY STATISTICS (labour force participation rate)
## Number of observations:  600
##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
##   60.07   65.11   65.82   65.72   66.82   67.73

Time series

The figure below shows the time series of the labour force participation rate.

The graph shows a significant gap between 2019 to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Time series of labour force participation

Histogram

The histogram below shows the overall distribution of labour force participation rate across the period from 1976 to early 2021.

The histogram shows a roughly bell-shaped data cluster from 64.5% to 67%, with a left-skewed out-lier cluster on the far left, which is mainly due to the drastic drop of LPF rate during Covid-19.

Histogram of labour force participation