The Size and Characteristics of Informal (“Gig”) Work in Canada

Olena Kostyshyna and Corinne Luu

No 2019-6, Staff Analytical Notes from Bank of Canada

Abstract: Underlying wage growth has fallen short of what would be consistent with an economy operating with little or no slack. While many factors could explain this weakness, the availability of additional labour resources from informal (“gig”) work—not fully captured in standard measures of employment and hours worked—may play a role. We investigate this possibility through the Bank of Canada’s Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations (CSCE) by documenting the characteristics and size of such working arrangements. We find that just under one-third of Canadians participate in this type of work, and this participation is often consistent with labour market slack. Just over one-third of respondents who take part in informal work do so as a result of weak economic conditions, and over half would switch their hours worked for hours in formal employment with no increase in pay. Part-time workers, youth and people in provinces with historically high unemployment rates were most likely to participate in informal employment. A portion of these workers would not be considered part of the labour force by standard labour market measures due in part to the irregularity of their work schedules. Accounting for these workers could boost participation rates by 2–3 percentage points. Moreover, the magnitude of labour supply from such work that could become available to the formal sector is sizable. It amounts to roughly 700,000 full-time equivalent jobs or 3.5 per cent of the labour force on average over the third and fourth quarters of 2018. This additional margin of labour market supply may be contributing to reducing wage pressures.

Keywords: Labour markets; Recent economic and financial developments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E26 J20 J30 J46 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iue and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2019/02/staff-analytical-note-2019-6/ Abstract (text/html)
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/san2019-6.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bca:bocsan:19-6

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Analytical Notes from Bank of Canada 234 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G9, Canada. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().