Thursday, February 2, 2017

Employment Figures for all Manufacturing Plants Over Time

Question
Does anyone know of a resource that would allow someone to track employment figures for all manufacturing plants over time (including plant opening/closures, etc.)? The student would want to be able to merge these data with data from other sources (particularly Compustat), so would need geographic and SIC characteristics, etc.

I doubt that this would be available through Statistics Canada due to confidentiality restrictions, but would be delighted to hear otherwise!

Would CDER be able to assist with this request?

Answer
I will look into it here to confirm if the data would be available or not. I am not sure CDER would be the best option regardless as access is rather restrictive:

The CDER operates entirely on a cost-recovery basis. Researchers wishing to access data must submit a research proposal and be able to cover all project costs, including a peer review of their project proposal and a review to ensure that the project falls under Statistics Canada's mandate.

All microdata files used for approved projects are only accessible at Statistics Canada's head office, located at Tunney's Pasture in Ottawa, Ontario. Once a project is approved, researchers will have to complete the security screening process and take the Statistics Canada Oath of office in Section 6(1) of the Statistics Act.

From Manufacturing and wholesale trade division:
The ASML principal statistics are available in CANSIM table 301-0008. As for the commodities produced, we have an internal database from which we extract the codes the client needs. We ask that the client sends us the list of codes, geographical areas and reference periods he needs and we can provide him with a cost estimate and a sample of what is available. Therefore, he can see in advance if there will be any confidential cells in the set of data he asked for.

Employment figures are available in CANSIM except for reference years 2013 and 2014 where they were not collected. Please note that there will be breaks in the series throughout those years.

CANSIM tables:
[Geography seems to be at the provincial level only]
301-0008 RY 2012 to 2015
301-0006 RY 2004 to 2012
301-0003 RY 1990 to 2003
301-0001 RY 1981 to 1997

From Labour Statistics Division:
SEPH and LFS does not produce detailed data for manufacturing plants per say and could not provide any information pertaining to ‘’plant opening/closures’’.

We can however provide monthly or annual employment estimates by industry i.e. 31-33 Manufacturing.

Data of employment for all employees is available at a 4 digit level on CANSIM with the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH).

For monthly seasonally adjusted data the client can access CANSIM table: 281-0063 from jan. 2001 to nov. 2016

The annual data can be accessed on CANSIM table: 281-0024 from 2001 to 2015; 2016 data will be available March 31st 2017.

For the monthly table he will have to access the ‘’add/remove data’’ feature tab at the top of the page and then select each individual 4 digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) variant under manufacturing sector in step 3 starting at Manufacturing code 31-33

As for the LFS data on CANSIM, the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) for manufacturing is limited to a 2 digit level.


For annual data, the client can consult table 282-0008
For monthly seasonality adjusted data, he can consult table 282-0088