An overview of the goods sector

The goods sector includes industries that harvest, extract or transform raw materials into a product that can be handled or stored. There are seven main industry groupings, or sub-sectors within the goods sector:

Table 1 shows the relative size of these industries, based on employment and GDP in 2008, while Table 2 summarizes some of the key economic and labour force variables for industries within this sector.

Twenty-two percent of BC workers are employed in goods industries, and two of the 10 biggest employer industries in the province are in this sector.

Construction is ranked first in terms of employment, with 220,800 workers. Manufacturing, which has traditionally been the biggest employer in the sector, is currently ranked second, with 187,400 workers. Together, these two industries employ eight out of every 10 workers in the goods sector.

Rankings based on employment aren't the same as those based on an industry's GDP. The GDP rankings reflect the value added to the economy by each industry, and this is based not only on the number of people working in the industry and how much they're paid, but is also an indication of the extent to which capital inputs are used in production.

Although construction has become the biggest employer in the goods sector, manufacturing accounts for a larger share (40%) of the sector's GDP.

Agriculture (a labour-intensive industry) is ranked third among the goods industries based on employment but would be sixth if GDP were used as a basis for comparison. In contrast, less than 3% of workers in the goods sector are employed in the utilities industry, but it generates 9% of the sector's GDP. That difference is due to the relative importance of capital inputs used by the utilities industry.

Table 1
Employment and GDP in the Goods Sector

2008 Data	Employment			Gross domestic product
	Thousands	Percent of total, goods	Percent of total, all industries	GDP in $2002 Million (chained)	Percent of total, goods	Percent of total, all industries
All industries	2,314.3		100.0	150,239		100.0
Goods	501.5	100.0	21.7	35,254	100.0	23.5
Construction	220.8	44.0	9.5	9,370	26.6	6.2
Manufacturing	187.4	37.4	8.1	13,855	39.6	9.3
Agriculture	33.7	6.7	1.5	1,062	3.0	0.7
Mining, oil & gas extraction	25.8	5.1	1.1	4,355	12.4	2.9
Forestry & logging	17.4	3.5	0.8	2,421	6.9	1.6
Utilities	14.2	2.8	0.6	3,185	9.0	2.1
Fishing, hunting & trapping	2.2	0.4	0.1	109	0.3	0.1

Data Source: Statistics Canada & BC Stats
Note: The GDP figures do not sum to the published totals because they are chained (chained data are not additive except in the base year, which is currently 2002)

Table 2
Key Labour Market Indicators for the Goods Sector

	2008 Data					Average (1990-2008)
	Average hourly wage rate ($)	Usual hours worked each week	Percent employed full-time	Percent self-employed	Percent female	Unemployment rate (%)
All industries	21.46	35.9	79.9	18.5	46.8	7.8
Goods	22.92	40.1	91.5	22.7	20.9	8.4
Construction	23.00	39.8	91.0	34.2	13.3	10.2
Manufacturing	22.33	39.3	93.0	7.2	26.5	6.2
Agriculture	14.05	41.9	80.1	47.8	40.4	10.9
Mining, oil & gas extraction	27.96	-	96.1	11.2	22.1	7.6
Forestry & logging	25.22	-	92.5	23.6	17.2	13.5
Utilities	30.05	37.9	95.8	-	18.3	2.6
Fishing, hunting & trapping	-	-	90.9	68.2	31.8	16.5

Data Source: Statistics Canada