Question:
A researcher is looking for average individual income by province for 1925 and 1930.
I have consulted Historical Statistics of Canada but the only table that seemed to give that information (table E49: Average weekly wages and salaries, industrial composite, by province, 1939 to 1975) only goes back to 1939.
The main source of income data, according to Historical Statistics, seems to be the Survey of employment, payrolls and man-hours but that survey only started in 1941.
I found other tables (still in Historical Statistics of Canada) that show the aggregate amount of salary and related income by province (E1: Wages, salaries and supplementary labour income, by province, 1926 to 1975) but that does not help with average individual income.
So other than census data (that would only cover 1921 and 1931) , is there any source of annual salary data for those years?
Answer from DLI:
This is an interesting question. The monthly microfiche series 72-002a Employment, Earnings and Hours = Emploi, gains et durée du travail (Dec. 1922- ) may be useful. We have these in microfiches here and I have a weird feeling that I used these a long time ago. I can’t find the digitized version at publications.gc.ca for some reason.
While I found tables in the Canada Year Book of total amount of individual income assessed by occupations (including number of individual taxpayers), e.g., page 877, Canada Year Book 1933 …there was nothing comparable by provinces (only a total of corporate and individual income by province).
Answer from Subject Matter:
Subject matter has let us know that they do not have any other data sources for individual income for 1925 and 1930. The only other possible source might be the Canada Year Book.
If you’re interested in the Canada Year Book, the collection from 1867 to 1967 is available on the Alberta Mirror EFT site. Files exist in PDF in both English and French.
