Characteristics of The Workforce

What are the characteristics of the work force?

The male-female composition of the province's work force is nearly equal. About 53% of the workers in BC are men, while the remaining 47% are women.

Most workers in the goods industries are male

Nine out of ten women with jobs are employed in service industries

However, women are much more likely to work in service industries than in the goods sector. Nine out of every ten women who have jobs are employed in the service sector. In the goods sector, only 20% of the workers are female. In contrast, more than half of the workers who have jobs in service industries are women.

While there are many reasons for this difference, it is partly related to the nature of work in some goods-producing industries. Although a growing number of women are working in non-traditional jobs, women may be less likely than men to choose a job that requires a lot of physical strength, or involves long periods of time spent away from home at a job site where there might not be many amenities. These types of jobs are more commonly found in the goods sector than in service industries.

Self employment is becoming more common in the service industries

Self-employment has historically been most common in the goods sector, largely because so many farmers, fishers and loggers are self-employed. In goods industries as a whole, the self-employment rate remained close to 20% during most of the period between 1990 and 2005, although it began to climb at the end of the period. The service sector played a big role in the increase in self-employment that occurred in BC during most of the last fifteen years. The percentage of self-employed people in service industries has risen from 14% in 1990 to its current level of 18%.

Self-employment is now almost as common in the service sector as in goods-producing industries. For the economy as a whole, the percentage of self-employed workers has risen from 16% to 20%, which is quite a significant change over a relatively short time span.

Men are nearly twice as likely to be their own bosses as are women. One-fourth of the male work force was self-employed in 2005. This compares to one-seventh of all employed women.

One in five BC workers is self employed

People who work in the goods sector are more likely to experience periods of unemployment

This Guide reviewed which industries employ the most people, and described some of the characteristics of people working in the goods and service sectors, the kinds of jobs they have, whether they're self-employed or work for other people, and whether they're more likely to be male, or female.  In this section we'll look at another important characteristic of the labour market: the unemployment rate, and how it varies among industries.

Unemployment rates are affected by many factors. For example, people with jobs in industries such as agriculture, fishing, and construction may not be able to work during the winter months because of weather conditions. In other industries, people won't face the same likelihood of being jobless on a regular basis because the weather doesn't affect their ability to work.

Seasonal factors also have a big effect on unemployment rates. For instance, retailers may need extra staff for the pre-Christmas season but require fewer workers at other times of the year. Hotels might hire additional help during the busy summer months, but lay these workers off during slower periods. People who work in industries where the demand for goods and services is seasonal may also face a higher-than-average likelihood of experiencing periods of unemployment.

In industries that produce goods mainly for export to other countries, unemployment rates can be affected by changes in world demand for their products. For example, most of BC's wood exports are destined for use in housing construction in the US and overseas.

That means that changes in the housing market or other economic conditions in these regions can affect the demand for BC wood products. This may lead to layoffs and shutdowns, or to job growth and overtime work, depending on what the situation is. Similarly, changes in the state of BC's housing market will affect the need for workers in residential construction. These are just a few of the many factors that cause unemployment rates to vary among industries.

People who work in goods-producing industries face a significantly higher likelihood of being unemployed at some point than their service-sector counterparts do. This is especially true during economic downturns. That's because goods-producing industries tend to cut back on their production when markets are weak.

While some service industries are also affected in this way, many of them provide services for which there is a demand even when the economy stalls. The strength and size of BC's service sector is almost certainly what prevented the economy from slipping into a recession in the early years of this decade, when the province's goods-producing industries did not fare well. Figure 12 illustrates the close relationship between the economic cycle and unemployment in the goods sector.

As it shows, the jobless rate in the goods sector rose sharply during the economic slowdown in 1991 and didn't fall back to its pre-1991 level until three years later. The incidence of unemployment also increased in the service sector, but not nearly as much. There was another spike in the unemployment rate in the goods sector in 1998 and again in 2001, when BC's economy also stalled. That slowdown had only a small effect on the unemployment rate in the service industries.

Unemployment rates are higher, and more volatile, in the goods sector [1]

BC's unemployment rate has been falling, and is currently at a 30-year low. This means that at the moment, people who are looking for work have a better chance of finding employment than at any time in the last thirty years. They may not be able to find jobs in the industry or region they want to work in, but there are jobs out there.

The current labour market situation isn't likely to be sustainable over the longer run, since the unemployment rate is ‘fast approaching (and may already be at) the natural rate of unemployment. This is the rate at which the demand for labour is equal to the supply of workers. In other words, people looking for work can find jobs and employers can find workers when they need them.

There will always be a few people who are unemployed, either because they're temporarily between jobs, or because the industry that they work in is undergoing changes. Economists have traditionally pegged the natural unemployment rate at about four percent, a rate that's already been reached in the service sector, and one that's fast approaching in the province's goods industries.

Four out of every ten employees in the province work in small businesses

Of the 1.7 million British Columbians who have a job but are not self-employed, 38% [2] work at an establishment with fewer than 20 employees.

Another 36% of employees have jobs at establishments where there are between 20 and 99 workers. Eighteen percent are in larger businesses (100 to 500 employees) while 7% work at establishments with at least 500 employees.

Establishment sizes tend to be a little smaller in the service sector than in the goods producing industries, where 26% of the workers have jobs at establishments with at least 100 employees.

Small businesses are the biggest employers in both the goods and service sectors

Where are the jobs located?

Three out of every four jobs in BC are located in the Lower Mainland (61%) and Vancouver Island (16%) areas. This is hardly surprising, as these two regions [3] also contain most of the province's population. About 11% work in Thompson/Okanagan–the region around Kamloops, Kelowna and Penticton. Cariboo (4%), Kootenay (3%), North Coast/Nechako (2%) and Northeast (2%) each employ a relatively small percentage of the province's workers.

Most of the jobs are in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island areas, reflecting the geographic distribution of BC's population

Figure 15 illustrates differences in the structure of the various regional economies. Goods production accounts for a much bigger percentage of total employment in the northern and interior regions of the province, where many of the mineral and forest resources are located, than in the rest of the province.

The northern and interior regions rely more heavily on goods production as a source of employment

About a third of the jobs in the Cariboo, Northeast and North Coast/Nechako regions are in goods-producing industries. Goods account for a much smaller percentage of total employment in the three most densely populated regions, where services provide between 73% and 81% of the jobs.

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[1] Some people who are looking for work are not associated with a particular industry, so are neither unemployed goods nor service workers. These people are included in the calculation of the overall unemployment rate. This is why the overall unemployment rate can be higher than the rate for both the goods and service sectors.

[2] Percentages don't add to 100 due to rounding

[3] A map showing the boundaries of BC's eight development regions can be found in Appendix 4.