As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, it has become well-understood that the economic consequences of COVID-19 lockdowns have been harsher for lower-wage workers. While higher-wage workers are more likely to be unaffected by the pandemic, as they are able to work remotely, hundreds of thousands of service sector workers have lost work. ICTC’s recent report, The Digital-Led New Normal: Revised Labour Market Outlook for 2022, documents the disparate impacts on employment across three evenly sized groupings of workers by wages.

From the report, Figure 1 shows employment in February, March, April, and May 2020 for all Canadian workers. Workers are…

As fall approaches, COVID-19 continues to pose serious health and policy challenges for Canadians. While daily new infections are not as high as during the peak in May, they are up from a low in July. Recent daily new infections are estimated to be in the range of 500–1,000, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Daily New Infections in Canada

Unadjusted employment in Canada grew by about 220,000 from July to August, or 1.2%, according to Statistics Canada. Employment tends to rise in summer due to sectors like construction and agriculture. After adjusting for this seasonality so that all months in a year are comparable, employment in August was about 5.7% below February levels (or a bit over 1 million workers). This is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Canadian Seasonally-Adjusted Employment

The drop in employment since February varies by province. Figure 2 shows that Alberta remains farthest below February employment levels, still about 7% below the peak…

On Friday, Statistics Canada released new sector-level Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for June 2020. After much speculation, this data offers an idea of how Canada’s recovery from the COVID-19 economic crisis is likely to unfold.

In short, the resumption of economic activity has been faster than many analysts expected. This relief comes after months of record-breaking plunges in economic indicators. Figure 1 below shows that aggregate Canadian GDP in June had nearly recovered to the level of March 2020, just following the onset of the pandemic, and was about 9% below the February peak.

A spotlight series on British Columbia

Canada’s Pacific melting pot province of British Columbia is rich in natural beauty, resources, and talent. Compared to Ontario and Quebec in particular, the province has so far managed to avoid a large number of COVID-19 infections and has suffered less economic damage as a result. Credit may be due to the smart policies BC enacted quickly, such as preventing nursing-home staff from working in multiple locations.[1] Nevertheless, the economic shock from COVID-19 is enormous, and it remains to be seen how the economy will recover, and how society will restructure itself following the shock. …

One year ago, ICTC released the report A Digital Future for Alberta: An Analysis of Digital Occupations in Alberta’s High-Growth Sectors. This report analyzed and forecast employment in key digital occupations across Alberta’s economy during a period where economic diversification was beginning to take shape. Analysis encompassed many areas, including the fastest-growing digital jobs in 2019, wage premia for digital roles, the most in-demand digital skills, the fastest growing STEM fields of study, and many other findings based on primary research. …

Just a month ago, I was happily presenting ICTC research on smart mobility — one of ICTC’s smart city priority areas — at the MOVE ‘Mobility Re-imagined’ 2020 Conference in London, UK. The conference brought together more than 10,000 attendees from around the world. Today, large conferences like these are largely a thing of the past , with many suggesting that they may not resurface for months or even years. At the time that I traveled to London, troubling videos were emerging from Wuhan China, about a mysterious virus that seemed to be spreading across the region and shortly after…

The Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) was recently invited to participate in a roundtable discussion hosted by the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Big Data Initiative. As members of the ICTC research & policy team currently completing research on 5G and its use-cases across industry lines, my colleague Rosina Hamoni and I joined the conversation. While we were roundtable participants, we also treated the discussion as a chance to glean insight from the ten other experts around the table. The group included a number of heavy-hitters such as the CTO from the city of Vancouver, Directors and Chief Security Officers…