With the adoption of the 2025 SNA coming around in 2029-2030, here's the impact on nominal GDP from the inclusion of data as recommended by it. We see a slight shift upward (average of 2.2%) over 2000-2019 with it's impact growing over time. If the trend holds 2024 will be ≈2.6% high

A significant study released by Statistics Canada this morning casts new and surprising light on real per capita regional income disparities in Canada. After PPP adjustment, Ontario and BC ranked lower in 2021 while the poorer regions correspondingly higher. www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quo...

Lol we got an "urban studies" guy saying that immigrants are stealing jobs because the average labour force participation rate is falling. In addition he cites Borjas as his proof that immigrants suppress wages LOL nationalpost.com/opinion/joel...

An update to my TFP calculation. Made a coding error with the pre-2006 LFS data so it strongly overstated labour composition growth.

Ok there's the final product for quartrely total factor productivity! Happy with this for now.

Really rough first pass at calculating TFP for Canada. A lot of stuff I'm really not happy about here that I'll be revisiting. I will also be extending this further back in time as well.

In the process of replicating and extending Diewert and Yu (2012) where they calculate Total Factor Productivity but I will be doing it on a quarterly basis and extending it to the Present. Multiplying labour quality by hours worked gives us our "labour services" input. Details below 1/n

Long-term interest rate yields on US Treasury securities have trended up since Trump's 'Liberation Day'. The risk of default has never been higher as the fiscal deficit explodes and uncertainty stalls private decision-making under a President who made a career out of welshing on his personal debt.

Twitter is completely FUCKED right now. Unusable 🤧 What will I do for entertainment now???

An update on permits issued for study, temporary foreign worker program, and international mobility program. Reminder that this includes renewals and new permits! Looks like study permit issuances is going up again after falling, but exercise caution with this series!

As the US drives its international indebtedness ever higher, Canada's net asset position keeps expending. Our financial picture is much better balanced. The Trump budget plan for this year will drive US indebtedness even further down, necessitating more borrowing and further weakening the US$.

A US deficit of $2.3 trillion is about 7.5% of expected US GDP in 2026. Canada is in the range of 2% defict/GDP. Their 10 year bond is about 4.5%; ours is about 3.5%.

Today's inflation data: avg prices rose 1.7% in April vs last year. Absent carbon taxes, inflation would have been 2.3% in April (see: www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/...). This 0.6% effect validates research (incl. by myself and @dr_jen_winter) on the effect of CTaxes. #cdnecon #cdnpoli

If you are interested in Canadian employment statistics, I have a new piece on Substack (free) comparing LFS and SEPH here: philip635.substack.com/p/comparing-...

The big problem with most of the financialization and commodification of housing arguments is the lack of foundation in data and real world processes. It’s 90% ideology and 10% cherry-picked examples.

I had never noticed and now this is all I can think about.

Canada, unlike the US surprisingly, has been experiencing a RELATIVE decline of the manufacturing sector for decades now. Interesting to see that the decline in non-durable manufacturing has been essentially a straight line down, while durable is more volatile.

Annoying how many broken series there are for Canada. Like expenditure based GDP is all the way back to 1961 but for production based GDP the chain is broken. Just an example to indicate the problem.

To give you an idea of the impact of treating data as a produced asset, GDP in 2019 would be about 2.5% higher with it's inclusion. bsky.app/profile/prio...

The update to the 2008 SNA is now here, 2025 SNA! Data will FINALLY be considered a produced asset and so will now show up in GDP! Unfortunately, it'll take awhile for countries statistical agencies to adopt it's recommendation though.

I’ve been waiting for news on this.

This is US self-immolation. I was glad to see the PM signal he was not in a rush to make a deal ("no white smoke expected"). The US position gets weaker every day as the broad US public sees the negative impact of the tariffs in their daily lives; made a bit even worse by our countermeasures.

@tammyschirle.bsky.social @carsjam.bsky.social @jensvb.bsky.social What do you folks think of this fixed-weight average of the median real family incomes of the nine family types that StatCan identifies? It's an attempt to adjust for changing family composition. Unadjusted CAGR 0.3%, adjusted 0.9%.

I saw this graph published by RBC. This kind of stuff is actively harmful to any discussion of productivity. Growth accounting is DESCRIPTIVE, NOT CAUSAL. Investment (fixed capital formation) is an OUTCOME of deeper forces like technology, policy, and institutions.

Thought this was pretty incredible! Inferring from the real time crime index data, the US homicide rate is the lowest in it's history.

Maybe unbelievable but half of tax filers pay no federal or provincial income taxes (payroll included) net of transfers. In 2022, the 50th percentile effective rate was 0%. For 18 to 24 year olds: 52% paid 0% or less. 25 to 54: 34% 55 to 64: 38% 65 and above: 90%

This is literally rage bait, surely?

This is five year income changes from the LAD. This is LONGITUDINAL data, as in, it follows a group from one period to the next. I had no idea this data existed! But I stumbled upon it! Very cool!

I really just don't understand why people think the federal government controls the economy. If you look at ICP benchmarks, Canada was "falling behind" relative to the US all the way back in 2005, did Harper neglect the economy?

Now that the CPC platform is out, I can post an update to the debt/GDP trajectories. The CPC document includes assumed revenue gains that many, including me, find dubious. So, I've put lines showing their numbers with/without the assumed revenue gains. I'm using PBO GDP as demominator.

Surely the Conservative platform will receive the same amount of vitriol towards it's deficit as the Liberal one, right? I'll be patiently waiting for the same level of criticism, otherwise a lot of people will have outed themselves as ideologues.

Here are Debt/GDP ratios for three scenarios: 1--PBO baseline. 2--LPC platform (costed by themselves) 3--CPC platform (costed by LPC) I'll happily update with CPC platform numbers if CPC releases them. But until then it doesn't seem fair that they escape scrutiny. So, I'll go with what I have.

If you think 'Trump trade shock is no big deal' then maybe we should have declining debt/GDP. No need to invest in a new path or make any changes. Business as usual. On the other had, if you think the Trump presidencey *has* changed things, there's a case that we need to invest in a new path.

Made this chart for your guy's viewing pleasure. Data from each country comes from their respective national accounts so extremely high quality. Growth is observed to be identical over the 2001 to Present period, in fact in PPP terms it's higher now than 24 years ago.

Oh just shut the fuck up with this self-serving drivel. (this, ironically, is from an Ontario-based law professor at Queen's) www.rightsprobe.org/alberta-decl...

Currently re-reading Miran's 2024 paper. "The economic context into which tariffs are levied will be of significant importance, and the fragility or robustness of inflation expectations and local supply elasticities at current macroeconomic equilibrium can play substantial role."

This paper was making the rounds, but did you notice it has a key contradiction? They divide cities into two groups (high and low housing supply constraints), and estimate the supply elasticity—how much quantities change in response to prices. Result: no difference! 1/

StatCan released data from the T1 tax files yesterday. Real median wages, salaries and commisions of all tax filers has increased by 6.8% since 2019! This data is even better than that from the national accounts, SEPH, or the LFS!

Uh oh Jens, new slop fresh off the press! Immediate red flag to me is this cite on the fourth page "In Canada, ‘real estate and rental and leasing’ is the largest industry by value (Statistics Canada 2024a)." www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @jensvb.bsky.social

Hahahaha man why was I sleeping on the National accounts data man... Since 2019 real weekly earnings up: NA: 8.5% SEPH: 6.5% LFS: 7.3% BTW National accounts data is census of all T4s so very hard to deny. Man I'm sitting pretty right over here about my skepticism of "wage suppression" from NPRs.

It's possible to use the LFS PUMFs to make a comparable series to the SEPH one, which is what I did here. Employment growth since 2019 has been much much stronger in the LFS (+12.2%) compared to the SEPH (+7.6%)

This is absolutely mind blowing. onemileatatime.com/news/airline...

Ok there's Canada's entire (excluding Indigenous peoples until 1871) population history! Lot's of missing data before 1750 so I had to interpolate missing data points from the data I did have.

After seeing people lose their minds over Canada's population growing at a 1.2% rate, I got interested in seeing what Canada's entire population history looked like (excluding the Indigenous populations unfortunately). More work to be done! This is basically 85% of what would become Quebec.

1/2 As the US kakistocracy continues to reveal itself, day after day, as dishonest, unreliable, cruel and without any moral principles, I cannot understand why investors, presumably an intelligent group, continue to hold its debt instruments. Expect a growing flight to trustworthy alternatives.

I actually discovered that the US does published a SNA basis disposable income series so I'm going to use that going forward, makes things much easier! Also included Australia.

Selling off US securities began in January, StatCan reported today. Canadian investors began to see the shape of the new Trump government immediately after the inauguration. That government's lack of honesty, integrity and reliability is the big factor. Expect this divestment to continue. #cdnecon

RIP carbon tax 😞

An update to my household credit market debt to disposable income chart. I updated it to include Q4 2024, and improved the pre 1990 data for Canada. The Canada series is adjusted so as to be comparable to the US one.