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iii. An Alternative Measure of Employment Rates
Another measure can be used to estimate employment rates. Employment rates based on
the Labour Force Survey (LFS) consider the status of the respondents in the reference week of
each month. The annual figure is the average of the monthly estimates. However, some people
work only seasonally and hence are only counted as employed in the months in which they work,
which lowers the annual average employment estimates. Seasonal workers sometimes earn the
equivalent of a full year income and are still not counted as fully employed persons. The ratio of
the number of persons who received employment income during the year, even if only for one
month, to the total working age population is a measure similar to employment rates. To the
degree that there are part-year workers, this measure will exceed the LFS figures based on
monthly estimates.
Aboriginal Canadians fare much better in employment rates using this measure: 60.4 per
cent of the Aboriginal population received employment income in 2001 compared to only 49.5
per cent under the LFS measure. Non-Aboriginal Canadians had a 63.9 per cent employment rate
under this measure, a gap of 3.5 percentage points with aboriginal Canadians. Given that the gap
between the two populations was 12.3 percentage points with the official rates, this suggests that
Aboriginal Canadians have a desire to work, but that opportunities for stable work are lacking.
The most striking instance of the difference between the two employment rate measures
is for persons with bachelor‘s degrees: 84.7 per cent of Aboriginal Canadians in this educational
category received some income during the year, whereas only 78.1 per cent of non-Aboriginal
Canadians did (Appendix Table 12). Aboriginal Canadians with grades 9 to 13, who had a much
lower employment rate than their non-Aboriginal counterparts, actually had an employment ratio
that was almost equivalent to that of non-Aboriginal Canadians (50.8 and 51.7 per cent,
respectively). Overall, the 2001 gap of 3.5 percentage points between the Aboriginal and non-
Aboriginal populations using this measure was only about half as large as in 1996 (6.2 points).
G. Other Indicators of Aboriginal Well-Being
The report earlier highlighted the important findings of the literature on the effects of
educational attainment on many indicators of well-being such as poverty, crime and health. In
this sub-section, the report will discuss some of the same indicators, focusing in particular on the
Aboriginal population.
i. Poverty
Statistics Canada does not regularly report the poverty rate for Aboriginal individuals.
However, a recent analytical paper by Heisz and McLeod (2004) reported that the poverty rate of
the Aboriginal population living in 27 CMAs20 was 2.4 times higher than the non-Aboriginal
20 In some Canadian cities, the Aboriginal population represents a particularly large proportion of the total
population. The highest proportion of Aboriginal Canadians in 2001 was in Saskatoon, with 9.0 per cent of the
population, followed by Winnipeg (8.3 per cent) and Regina (8.1 per cent). Outside of the Western provinces,
Thunder Bay had the highest proportion of Aboriginals with 6.6 per cent. The CMA with the smallest proportion of