The name is absent

74

that of non-Aboriginal over the same period (0.9 percentage point). The unemployment rate gap
between off-reserve Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal in Western Canada thus decreased from 9.9
points in 2001 to 7.4 points in 2005.

Table 21: Proportion of Projected Increase in Aboriginal Labour Force and Number of Employed (Scenario 3)
Which Occurred between 2001 and 2005 in Western Canada

Source: Projected increase calculated from appendix tables 23 and 24. Increase from 2001-2005 found in Luffman and
Sussman (2007).

*Share of aboriginal Canadians living off-reserve in Western Canada was 67.6 per cent in 2001 as calculated from
Statistics Canada (2005a). This share was used to estimates the total increase.

In Western Canada, the employment rate of off-reserve Aboriginals was 58.3 per cent in
2005, up from the 54.4 per cent in 2001. The employment rate of non-Aboriginals increased as
well, 65.5 per cent in 2005 up from 64.5 per cent in 2001. Therefore the gap between the non-
Aboriginal and the Aboriginal employment rate decreased from 10.1 to 7.2 percentage points
over the 2001-2005 period. In only four years, almost a third of the original employment rate gap
was eliminated.

The increase in the participation rates and employment rates of off-reserve Aboriginals in
the West has effectively increased the Aboriginal labour force by 34,000 individuals and the
number of employed has increased by 36,000 individuals. Under scenario 3, by 2017, the
Aboriginal labour force in Western Canada will increase by a projected 171,385 people and the
number of Aboriginal employed will increase by 198,487. If we assume that improvements for
off-reserve and on-reserve Aboriginal Canadians were of a similar magnitude, we can estimate
that almost 30 per cent of the projected increase in labour force for Aboriginal Canadians for the
2001-2017 period already occurred (Table 21). Moreover, 26.8 per cent of the most optimistic
projected change in employment for Aboriginal Canadians already occurred. Since the period
observed is four years, or 25 per cent of the total 16 years period, these developments suggest
that our projections might in fact underestimate the potential contribution of Aboriginal
Canadians to the country‘s economy.

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