The next chart compares proportionate employment growth for both the manufacturing and retail sectors for Canada and the provinces covered by the Labour Force Survey. The strong gains in Quebec are particularly noted. New Brunswick showed modest declines for retail sector employment and a small gain for the manufacturing industries. Otherwise, retail outpaced manufacturing in all other parts of the country.

Figure 35 Employment Growth 2000-04

The actual gains are shown in the next chart (Figure 36) by province.

Figure 36 Net Employment Gains 2000-04

Employment growth over recent years has been relatively solid after only modest gains earlier in the 1990s. Gains have dominantly come from full-time employment. The next chart (Figure 37) shows that more of the new jobs have been occupied by female workers than male but males still make up slightly more than half of the full-time retail work force.

Figure 37 Retail Employment 1987-2004

One of the more interesting issues is the role of self-employment in retail. The next chart (Figure 38) distinguishes workers by class of employment showing self-employment. The latter has been aggregated into two classes, self-employed workers with paid help and others. The latter would include sole proprietors of small retail businesses including those in the home without any employees. The chart also highlights the strong growth of full-time employment.

Figure 38 Retail Employment by Class of Worker

The next chart (Figure 39) focuses just on employees to summarize recent growth in employment by sector.

Figure 39 Employed Workers in Retail

For employees, growth has been stronger in part-time employment in recent years but more jobs were generated in full-time because of its larger base. The strong expansion in non-store retailing should be noted.

Retail provides lots of job opportunities through turnover in both the part-time and full-time components of its labour force. The next chart (Figure 40) shows the number of persons by sector that started a job with a new retail employer in the average quarter in two separate years.

Figure 40 Recent Retail Employees by Sector

The relatively high turnover in the food and beverage sector probably reflects the strong emphasis on student and part-time employment. Reference to the data table (Table 54) in the statistical appendix indicates that an average of at least 160,000 persons found a job with a new employer in the retail sector in any quarter in the period 2001 through 2004. This is equivalent to between 9 and 10 per cent of the employed retail labour force in most provinces. Details by province are shown in the statistical appendix in Table 57.¹¹

The final chart (Figure 41) in this chapter focuses on relative compensation. The Survey of Employment, Payroll and Hours (SEPH) covers payroll data from establishment. The survey provides data separately on employees that are hourly-rated and others. The wage rate excludes benefits. The chart shows the actual wage rate as bars plotted against the left axis. The ratio of the retail wage rate to the broad SEPH industrial aggregate is plotted as a line against the right axis. Although continually below the industrial average, the chart shows that the wage gap between retail employees and other industrial workers has been significantly narrowed in recent years.

Figure 41 Hourly Wages